


Teratoma

by Desvenlafaxine



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game), Mass Effect Trilogy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-03-25 14:06:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 52,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13836348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desvenlafaxine/pseuds/Desvenlafaxine
Summary: Your name is Mordin Solus. You hear voices.You have to admit, even though what they tell you do is strange, often it's good advice.This is your story.(THIS STORY SPOILS BLOODBORNE'S ENDINGS)





	1. V1-B1 - Childhood Ignorance / Insight

**VOLUME ONE: CHILDHOOD IGNORANCE**

**BOOK ONE: INSIGHT**

**Talat, Sur’Kesh  
** **7th of Skies**  
 **2657 Galactic Standard**

The door burst open, and Aenon Solus marched into the small, meticulously-kept bedroom with arms spread and a smile upon his face. “Good morning, Mordin! Hope your long nap was a nice one,” Aenon said, stomping loudly over to the window and setting the windows to be near-transparent. “Are you feeling rested at all today, kid?”

_Good morning, little one. Another day. Another sunrise. May your day be blessed and kind._

“Morning, uncle,” Mordin replied, shaking the grogginess from his head as he adjusted to the light. “I’m feeling pretty good. Less tired than usual, I think.”

_Good morning, lady._

Aenon chuckled - and so did the strange, soft-spoken woman who only Mordin could hear - before kneeling down next to Mordin’s bed. “Good man. Well, if you’re feeling up to it, we could swing by the clinic before you head to school. Or you could take it easy, and I’ll meet you there after you’re done for the day. Up to you, eh?”

_You are quite alright, my young herald. Though you may - for now - be of weak constitution, let me assure you that your health is of no concern. You have nothing to fear. Best, perhaps, to be done with the prodding and the questions before the day exhausts you._

“I think we should go before school,” Mordin replied, easing himself out of bed and looking up at his uncle. “If they end up running tests on me again or something, it’d probably be better if I’m not tired, or something. Right?”

_How magnanimous of you, little one. An admirable trait. I commend you for it._

“You might be the only kid I know who’s thinking about the well-being of the doctors at the clinic,” Aenon scoffed, shaking his head. “Well, I’m not gonna argue with you - I’d rather get that junk outta the way before work. We’ve got a bit of time, though, so go wash up, get ready and we’ll grab something to eat afterwards before school, alright?”

“Sounds good. Uh, I have a question, Uncle Aenon,” Mordin added before his caretaker could leave the bedroom. “What does mag-nan-a-mus mean?”

_Lofty. Regal. Like a king, little one. A fine characteristic for a herald to have, would you not agree?_

“Magnanimous?” Aenon turned around and frowned slightly. “Now where’d you hear that? I’m guessing you didn’t read it, since you’d have looked it up.”

“I overheard it, but forgot to ask about it yesterday,” Mordin replied, the lie coming smooth and easily.

_Ahh, a little fabrication. Not quite a lie, but not quite incorrect. A kind gesture, even if some might not interpret it so._

“Not like you to forget something you don’t know,” Aenon chuckled. “Well, it means - something like being very generous, or very forgiving, especially to someone who you have power over.”

_A good answer, if a little literal._

“Oh. Hmm. Okay, thanks,” Mordin said, nodding slowly. “I’ll go shower up now.”

“Alrighty! Take your time, kid.” Aenon left Mordin’s bedroom with a nod, leaving the boy alone in the room - or as alone as he could be, with the woman in his head.

_If you intend to make ready for the day, then I shall take my leave for a short while as I usually do. Worry not, little one - I will always be close by._

_Are you kidding? I’m not worried,_ Mordin thought with a frown.  _Not about you watching me. What scares me is that I might be-_

_-mad? Descending into lunacy?_

Mordin walked over to the bathroom set into the side of his bedroom and stared into the mirror, sighing as he examined his exhausted features.  _That’s kind of offensive, you know. To people who are crazy, which I’m thinking might include me._

The woman chuckled in that same, lilting laugh she always did.  _Forgive me. I, of all, ah, people, am hardly up-to-date on what constitutes proper language in your society. Regardless, allow me to reassure you that you are quite sane - and in any case, a mind possessed of unbending rigidity can in many cases be just as much a burden as one which is in excess of flexibility. Moderation in all things, as some say. Sanity included._

_Moderation. Sanity included. Are you listening to yourself?_

_Yes._  Mordin imagined the woman shrugging.  _You will understand, in time, little one. For now, best to not keep your uncle waiting, I think - and with that I shall leave you to your morning rites._

The voice left him alone for a while longer than she’d said, and for that Mordin wasn’t quite sure if he was thankful or not. On the one hand, it was much easier to handle a conversation with his uncle on the way to the clinic without having to worry about listening to - let alone answering - the voice in his head, but despite the respite part of him found the quiet to be almost unsettling. It was difficult to gauge what, exactly, the character and nature of the possibly-imaginary-woman was - Mordin was always waffling between thinking of her as an imaginary compensation for a lack of motherly female figures within salarian society, or a richly detailed auditory hallucination brought on by a combination of his numerous brain tumours and chronic hypercoagulability.

Of late, though, the voice had been using more and more words - and making more and more comments - about things that Mordin most certainly hadn’t overheard, had no frame of reference for, or had no knowledge of. Which lent credence to the third possibility - the one that worried him the most.

_Nothing to fear, Mordin. Do not be afraid, the woman soothed. In time, you will exceed your peers in both mind, body and soul. Yours is a chosen future._

He didn’t like thinking about that.

Which meant, of course, that within minutes his mind was stuck in an accelerating loop on just that topic, circling the edge of a growing terror he was capable of suppressing only through sheer force of will.

_Hush, hush, hush, Mordin. Still your mind and be calm, little one. The truth should not bring you fear - let your conclusions wash over you and fill you with calm and worth._

“Mordin?”

_No. No, that’s stupid. I’m losing it._

“Uh, Mordin? Doctor’s talking to you, bud.”

_Little one, your uncle and Doctor Iwil are speaking to you. I suggest you respond to them, lest they arrive at a conclusion you find disagreeable._

“Ah - uh, hello, sorry,” Mordin stammered, jerking upright and looking around the small examination room; he was sitting on the small scanner-bed in the corner, and both his uncle and Doctor Saenal Irwil - the same physician he’d had since birth - were looking at him with a mixture of concern and confusion. “Uh, what was the question?”

“Kids these days,” Doctor Irwil snorted. “I was asking,” he continued with a half-smile, “if you’d noticed any improvements to your general health since we lowered your nanite treatments. Clearly it’s impacted your attention span.”

“Sorry, uh, was just thinking about some stuff,” Mordin muttered. “I’m still tired all the time, but I’ve been sleeping a lot better. Oh, and my appetite’s a lot bigger now, too. I’ve eaten way more in the past few weeks compared to, well, basically forever.”

_I am so happy. So proud. A little one like yourself must eat and sleep to become strong._

“That’s good to hear,” Saenal replied with a nod. “My colleagues and I were unsure if tapering off your treatments was a good idea, given the number and size of your brain tumours - but considering the results, perhaps our worries were unfounded. In any case - Aenon, Mordin, if you’d turn your attention to the board.” The doctor tapped a few commands into his omnitool, and the holoboard in the corner of the room lit up with various medical scans and diagrams, most prominent of which was an image of Mordin’s brain.

Even now, after six years of seeing the same picture, Mordin could never quite push the throbbing, aching unease that flooded his stomach out of his mind when someone showed him the nightmare that was the inside of his head. His brain - the organ itself - was perfectly healthy, so long as you ignored the dozens of fleshy, bulbous teratomas that sat both within and on the exterior of his brain, each tumor bearing a fleshy core of half-developed eye-tissues.

_Do not be uneasy, brave herald. Be unflinching in the face of the unknown. Curiosity is the amongst the finest tools that one can carry._

It was like something out of one of those krogan-directed gore-shock movies.

_One’s body should never be a source of fear. Carry yourself and wear your skin with pride. I promise you this, young Mordin - you are destined for so much more than a lifetime spent under the scalpel and syringe._

“Looks the same to me,” Aenon noted with a frown. “This is supposed to be a good thing?”

“That’s just the thing, Aenon,” Saenal answered, shaking his head. “Maybe it’s some sort of genetic defect - though we haven’t found anything yet - but it’s almost as if the tumors are entirely benign. Think about it this way. Every time we excise them, they grow back in exactly the same spots at exactly the same rate in nearly identical shapes. Every time we target them with some sort of therapy - chemical, radioactive, nanoparticle - the same thing happens. When we leave them alone? They just...stay. They’re not spreading, they don’t replicate - they don’t even get any larger. The only difference is that the teratoma, the eye-tissues, develop a little more than usual if we leave them alone.”

“So you’re telling me that the, uh, eye-tumors in my nephew’s brain - and there are a lot of them - are safe?” Aenon blinked several times and snorted a laugh. “Forgive me if I don’t buy that.”

“I didn’t say it made any sort of conventional sense,” Doctor Irwil responded with a shrug. “To be frank, I don’t understand it any more than you do. If leaving these tumors alone causes no problems, then frankly I’d rather spare Mordin the trouble of treating him with therapies that ultimately don’t improve his health or treat his condition.”

Aenon and Mordin exchanged a look.

“Think about it. We’ve been subjecting you to therapies, treatments, surgeries and medication since you were two,” Saenal entreated. “It’s accomplished absolutely nothing. I’m not saying that you should just forget about your condition - you’d still be making regular visits to the clinic to keep an eye on things - but if leaving your body to take care of itself is the best way to do things, why fight it?”

_Because I’m afraid of what giving in means._

“I guess,” Mordin said aloud.

_Is it giving in, to accept one’s fate? One’s destiny? One’s purpose in life?_

_I didn’t ask to be - to have you in my head, or these cancer eyeballs in my brain, or to have my blood enjoy turning into pudding every few days for no reason._

_Fate,_ the woman said kindly, _is not something one asks for. Sometimes, purpose is given to you, and the noblest course of action is to face it standing upright with pride and conviction._

_You know, if I’m going to have a voice in my head tell me that my brain cancer is good for me, I’d at least like it to be less corny than some sort of third-rate motivational speaker._

_Corn-y? I am afraid I do not understand the word, young herald. What do the properties of maize have to do with your personal philosophies?_

_Maze? What? What are you talking about?_

_The yellow grain, yes? Tubular in shape? Kernels? I suppose I should not be surprised that, even on your world, something so similar should be cultivated._

Yel - wait. Oh. Oh no.

_Yes?_

_On your world._

_I do not understand._

_On. Your. World. What do you mean, “on your world?”_

_I am unable to explain the details in full, as I have noted previously. But surely, young man, you have grasped the basics of the truth. I myself have told you to face the truth without fear, to find comfort in it, to find worth in the conclusions you try so hard to push away._  
  
**_The woman smiled - Mordin could see her hands, pale-white and smooth, clasping together - and nodded._ **  
_  
Your hands. Why can I see your hands? Why - what is - your skin? Who are you? What are you? Where are you?_

_I am your caretaker, your gardener, your nurse. I have always told you this, young Mordin. I am by your side, out of sight, until you are ready in both body and mind. Your mind has been ready since you were young, but your body - only now, after your doctors have ceased their probing and prodding - is coming into its own._

_The tumors. You - you want them to grow._

_You are not dense or possessed of a slow mind. I have told you as such many times not to fear your body and its, ah, irregularities, for many years now._

_You - you put those things into me, didn’t you!_

_Not me, but - well, by proxy, I suppose that in a manner of speaking you are not incorrect._

_Why?_

_I cannot tell you here - but I think you are ready enough. Yes, yes, I think so. We shall try again tonight and find out if her impatience is, at last, vindicated._

_Try again? Her? Why are you so - so vague?_

_Not because I wish to deceive you, little herald. There are truths that some can never be ready for. In those cases, the withholding of knowledge, of Insight into the Truths I hold, is for their safety. Your safety. But fear not. You have been preparing for this your entire life, despite your persisting unease upon the matter. I am sure that, when the time comes, you will arise to the occasion with the same dignity you have always conducted yourself with._

_I don’t know what bothers me more, the fact that nothing you say makes any sense or the feeling that I’m more and more okay with it._

_Ruminations of that sort can wait. I should think that you’ve spent this day so quiet and reserved. At least answer your uncle; he has been worried about you all day, you know._

_What are you talking about?_

_It is time for your dinner. Eat your fill, for your rest tonight will be productive._

Mordin screamed slightly and jerked backwards, banging his head - not into the wall of the examination room, but into the headrest of his chair at the dining room table in the apartment he and his uncle shared.

“Mordin? Is everything alright?” Aenon asked, looking up from his plate. “You’ve been real quiet today - did something happen at school?”

“Wh - what? No, no, I’m alright,” Mordin replied, looking around the dining room and rubbing at his eyes. “Just - I’m just really tired today for some reason. And that thing at the clinic - I dunno, just doesn’t sit right with me.”

Aenon sighed. “Yeah, I feel you. I’m not a doctor or anything, but even I can’t help but feel weirded out. Since when is not treating illness, well, a treatment? You wouldn’t fix a blocked-up toilet by just, you know, shitting in it more.”

“I, uh, don’t know if that’s a very good analogy,” Mordin chuckled, looking down at his plate - which he’d apparently cleaned off without knowing it. “Not sure if most doctors would like having their work compared to plumbing.”

“Important work, though,” Aenon noted in between wolfing down another mouthful of stew. “Mmm - I mean, we have spaceships and mass relays and the Citadel, and we still need people to fix the toilets, right? It’s one of those jobs that I bet will never really go away. Would be nice if they got cheaper, though.”

“What was it dad used to say? Cheap, fast, or quality, pick two. Something like that,” Mordin said with a smile. “And I wouldn’t skip on quality when it comes to plumbing.”

“Tell that to the contractors we hired last week,” Aenon spat. “You’d think the Ministry of Finance could at least spring for decent hires.”

“Lowest bidders?”

“You know it, kid.”

Mordin sighed and shook his head. “You know, going into government with the rest of the family doesn’t really sound that fun, with the way you tell things.”

“Fun or not, you’ve got a civic duty to contribute somehow, right? It was a fit for me. Doesn’t have to be the same for you, as long as you’re helping out in some way,” Aenon answered, nodding slowly as he set down his plate.

_Even your uncle agrees. Fun need not factor into the enjoyment of your purpose._

_Oh, shut up._

“Well, it’s getting late for you - unless you want to be dead on your feet tomorrow I think you’d better head to bed soon, kid,” Aenon sighed as he got up and collected the plates at the table.

“You know, I don’t even mind the cancer and the blood and stuff,” Mordin grumbled. “I hate having to sleep so much. It feels like a waste of time.”

“Hey, it’s not that big a deal,” his uncle replied as he loaded the plates into the dishwasher across the kitchen. “Turians and asari sleep for ages and they manage to get things done. Think of it as a challenge, huh?”

“Still sucks.”

“Complaining will get you nowhere in life.”

“Which is why you’re constantly doing that?”

“Never said I was an ambitious man,” Aenon shot back with a grin. “Come on - go get yourself in bed before you end up passing out in the shower or something.”

“Alright, fine, fine. Good night, uncle - see you in the morning,” Mordin said, getting to his feet and making his way back to your room.

“Sleep well, kid!”

As he closed the door to his bedroom and stared blankly at his well-kept bed, Mordin shut his eyes and breathed - just breathed - for several moments.

_You there?_

_Of course. I am always here, little one._

_I’m scared of how little that bothers me these days._

_Ahh._  It was a drawn-out noise, soft, gentle, an acceptance and an agreement all in one.

_I want answers. I’ve - I’ve never lost a whole day like today._

_You have, many times._

_Today felt different. And I have questions._

_I will answer you as best as I can tonight._

_Tonight? It is the evening. Since when do you stall for time?_

_I am not attempting to hide from your curiosity - the opposite, in fact. But I cannot answer your questions, not here, such as things are. Perhaps, after a good night’s rest, you will be ready._

The woman vanished - Mordin could feel something twist in his mind, feel his blood shift and lighten.

_Hello?_

There was no answer.

For the first time, her silence truly and deeply terrified him; it was all he could do to shower and change into his sleepwear, so badly were his hands trembling.

He laid in his bed and shut off the lights.

He closed his eyes.

Sleep came easily, like it always did-

-except this time, he opened his eyes to find himself somewhere new. Familiar. Different. The same.

He was laying on a bed in some sort of - garden? Park? Forest? The bed was not his, either - far from the soft, long-molded memory-mattress that he was used to, or the heavy, comforting all-blue sheets he’d picked out a few months back, the thing he was laying in was of alien design.

The bed was soft, and comfortable, and that was as far as his familiarity with it went. The frame was made of an unpainted metal, and the mattress felt oddly primitive in the way it creaked and groaned as he slowly, carefully, cautiously eased himself upright; the sheets were composed of multiple layers of thin blankets, snow-white and patterned with a spiraling, lacy frill. An endless field of strange, unfamiliar flowers surrounded him; to his left there stood a sprawling, fenced-off area which held a forest of headstones, not unlike the sort turians used to mark the graves of their dead. On the right, a small hill which bore a bizarre mansion made of wood and glass and brick, styled in an alien manner that “looked positively ancient.

He got to his feet, feeling his feet push into the soft grass and flowers beneath him; he was wearing a set of cloth robes, well-worn and a dull red.

“Okay. Okay, I’m dreaming,” Mordin muttered to himself, eyes flitting about as he took in his surroundings. “Graveyard. Mansion-on-a-hill. And it’s...nighttime?” He looked up, and frowned; the sky was cloudless, revealing a moon - or some sort of planet-shaped thing - in the sky which pulsated and glowed with a soft, soothing blue.

_Well that’s not creepy at all, he thought. So...dreaming, but everything here looks weird. Nothing like any designs or flora I’ve ever seen. My imagination is good, but not this good, I don’t think. Theory number three...shit. Oh, this can’t be good._

He looked at the bed; since he’d gotten out of it and looked away, someone, or something, had made the sheets again.

_That’s...okay, right, this is a dream and nothing has to make sense. Stay calm. Stay cool. Think._

He squinted at the mansion on the hill, trying to make out more details; the hill was surrounded by a thick iron fence which went up to (maybe) his waist, and directly in front of him at the bottom of a hill was a large gate which separated the fields from the hill.

_Lady? Hey, lady! You here?_

There was no response.

“Hello? HELLO? Anyone here?”

His voice echoed through the fields.

Mordin sighed - and twitched as he noticed that there was smoke rising from the mansion; it was coming out of what might have been a chimney built into the roof of the house.

_Nothing better to do, and I’m not going into that graveyard._

He made his way over to the gate; a simple handle was inlaid into the door, and he pushed it open, the gate creaking as it swung forward to reveal a cobblestone path which spiraled up the hill. Flanked by perfectly-trimmed plants and bushes, Mordin ascended the pathway, walking past the occasional stone fountain, until at last he arrived at the front of the mansion - and there, sitting in a small courtyard at a small, pearl-white table, was her.

It had to be her.

She - it - looked salarian, at least in shape. But there the similarities ended; the woman was deathly pale, her skin looking almost as though it were chiseled out of porcelain, and her eyes were a dull, soft yellow-on-white. And her clothing - it was as alien as the rest of this dream; some sort of dark-blue hooded hat with a blood-red ribbon sat upon her head, and she wore a cloak-like shawl in the same dark blue which covered most of her body, exposing only her bare lower arms and legs. Even as she sat, her appearance seemed off; even ignoring her clothes and skin, her body seemed thin, even for a salarian, and without question she was taller than even the largest salarians he’d ever seen or head of.

“Good evening, my little one,” the woman said with a wide, beaming, loving smile; it was that same, strangely-accented voice that he could never quite place, that same soft, motherly tone with the lilt that drove him mad with fear and curiosity. “Mordin. Mordin Solus. Mordin, my strong, brave herald. It is so wonderful to see you in person at last.”

His thoughts were moving at full speed now, his eyes almost twitching as they took in the details of her appearance.

“You’re not salarian, are you.”

The woman paused, then covered her mouth with one of her hands and chuckled slightly.

“How like you, to skip a greeting and jump to questioning. Have you no time for pleasantries?” She gestured around her, before resting her hands on her lap. “Time moves differently here, Mordin. There is no rush. Come, have a seat,” she added, pointing at the chair across from her.

“I’d rather not. Not until you explain what’s going on,” Mordin pressed. “What you are. Why you - you put those things in my head, if you did. What this place is.”

The woman frowned, just for a moment, before her smile returned - though she shook her head slowly even as she did so. “I cannot. Not in full, though I will do my best.”

“Try me.”

“No, little one - I truly, honestly, can do no such thing.” She paused, and looked up at the moon, the smile on her face widening. “I am not salarian. You are correct, and I must admit we - I - am surprised at how quickly you landed at that conclusion. As much as I wish to show you my true visage, however, you are not ready. Not that seeing me as I am would drive you mad, or anything akin to that - but when I reveal myself, certain things must be done. Actions will be taken, plans set in motion, work will begin, and then, truly, you will be burdened, brave herald.”

“I knew it. Oh, shit, I knew it,” Mordin whispered. “Oh, fuck.”

“You curse? Why?” The woman frowned. “Do you find fear in my words?”

“I’ve read books. I’ve read a lot of books. This - this - is this a cosmic horror story? You’re - you always call me herald, you’re always hinting at things that I’m not ready to know - oh, oh no, you’ve got to be kidding me. It’s true, isn’t it. I’ve - you’ve picked me to be some sort of, I don’t know, a - a thing to bring - what am I even talking about?”

“Breathe, Mordin, breathe,” the woman urged, getting to her feet even as Mordin did his best - and failed - to rein in his heart. She walked - almost glided - over to him as he fell to the ground, trying to push her away - when she laid a cold, soft hand on him-

-and he felt calm. Pure, warm, caring calm.

“Shush, little one. It is alright. I did not mean you any harm, or to cause panic. Please - please, just sit with me for a moment.”

Mordin breathed. In, out, in.

“See? It is quite alright, brave herald,” the woman soothed, helping Mordin to his feet with a strength that belied her waifish appearance. “Now come. Sit, and let us talk without fear and panic and worry. I have answers, if you have questions.”

He did as he was told, and took his seat at the table across from the woman, doing his best not to think about the dull ache which pulsed through him whenever he looked to closely at her eyes.

“Are you thirsty? Hungry? This is, after all, a dream,” the woman asked with a small nod. “If you desire it, it can be made manifest.”

Mordin scowled. “I want to know what’s going on.”

“Patience. As I said - I am here with answers. But before that - I will have you answer my query, little one. Whether you chose to answer or not, I will have you know that I shall be enjoying tea, personally,” the woman noted with a nod.

“Tea.” Mordin blinked. “You drink tea.”

“Yes. Is that so hard to believe?”

“I don’t know,” Mordin scoffed. “Wow, the not-salarian lady who only I can hear in my head who lives in my dreams drinks tea? How could I have not have guessed that one?”

“There is no need to be upset. I meant no offense, little one,” the woman replied, tilting her head slightly. “After all, it is clear that there are some commonalities between my world and yours. Perhaps it would be best to clarify - when I say tea, you think of...certain leaves, boiled in water?”

“Yeah, what else would tea be?”

“I am unsure. I am sure there are other peoples in your plane who consume a different sort,” the woman thought aloud. “In any case - a moment.”

Mordin twitched.

He looked down as an uncomfortable, wriggling sensation passed through his body - and there, where before there was nothing, was a small set of pearl-white cups and a pot, all delicately engraved with a floral pattern.

“I shall pour for you, though it most places I believe it is custom for the young to serve their elders,” the woman said with a smile. Mordin watched as the pale woman delicately filled his cup with a pale bronze liquid, before filling her own and setting the pot down gently with a soft clink. She sipped for a moment, set her cup down, and looked at Mordin with a quizzical expression. “Will you not drink?”

“I never said I wanted tea.”

“Well, I did inquire as to what you wanted, and received no response from you. I thought it best - knowing that you do enjoy tea yourself - to share mine with you.”

Mordin took the cup.

A heady scent - flowery and sweet and gentle - filled his nostrils, and he drank deeply.

A taste of both thick honey and copper filled his mouth, before fading into an aftertaste of soothing herbs.

“Good, is it not?” The woman drained her cup before cradling it in her small hands, a gentle warmth in her eyes as she beheld Mordin. “Did you like it?”

“It wasn’t bad,” Mordin muttered. “Do I want to know what’s in it?”

“At the moment, perhaps not,” the woman replied. “So - now we have sat, and had tea. I believe introductions come next.”

“I’m pretty sure introductions come before tea, generally speaking.”

“This is a dream. The rules here can be bent,” the woman replied, shrugging.

“And besides, I don’t need to introduce myself,” Mordin continued, his tone darkening. “You, on the other hand, have a lot of explaining to do, assuming I’m not just completely insane.”

“Oh, little one, you worry so much about your sanity - really, you ought not to fear losing it.”

“I thought we were doing introductions, not reinforcing my belief that I’m definitely going nuts."

The woman got to her feet, and bowed deeply. “A formal greeting to you, Sur'Kesh Baelani Talat Saerik Solus Mordin, Herald of the Moonlit Shepherdess. You may call me the Plain Doll.”

 

 

 

  
Mordin blinked. "That sounds like a title, not a name."

The Plain Doll smiled slightly as she sat back down. “Perhaps not by your standards, little one, but it is the name that I go by. I have known no other name since my creation.”

“You were made?” Mordin asked, tone curious. “I mean - we’ve established that you’re not salarian, so I have no idea what you are - but to call yourself a Doll, and to say that you were created-”

“-is it such a strange thing to consider, Mordin?” the Plain Doll interjected with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Were you, too, not created? One of a clutch of eggs, fertilized by social custom at the will of a family, instead of between a mated pair?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mordin noted. “I meant - when you say created, I think of, uh, a mechanic building a robot, or I guess in your case a dollmaker making a doll?”

“My point still stands, little one. We were both birthed from the intent of others. The two of us are not mere products of base instinct and urges, but rather the considered love and want of our creators.”

“I’m not sure how much love factors into the salarian breeding programs,” Mordin pointed out.

“You were birthed, alongside the rest of your clutch, no?” The Doll shrugged, clasping her hands together atop the table. “Even if your birth was brought upon by social mores, there still lay in your conception a want and a desire, from parent to child.”

“I guess - wait, you’re trying to distract me,” Mordin snapped. “We’re getting off-topic.”

“Forgive me. To discuss matters as simple and as complex as the connection between mother and child - or, in your case, the lack thereof, on which I will withhold any further commentary at this time - was not an attempt to deceive you,” the Plain Doll replied, tapping her fingers idly. “I simply find you to be a fascinating person to discuss things with. Your perception of things, after all, is as alien to me as I am to you.”

Mordin said nothing.  _Alien to me as I am to you. Confirmation that she’s beyond my scope of knowledge? Not that I figured she’d be from one of the Citadel races,_ he considered.

“You are correct, little one. I am not of a background you are familiar with,” the Doll noted with obvious approval. “Your instincts are sharp.”

“You can read my min - of course you can read my mind,” Mordin groaned.

“An easy thing to forget,” the Doll reassured him. “I, and the Herald’s Dream, are far beyond your reckoning. I - and what I represent to you at the moment - could perhaps be described, in words you might use, as an ‘outside-context problem.’ Thankfully, the problem you face wishes you and your peoples no harm, which brings us to you, me, and the relationship we share.”

“So you’re not salarian, not from the Citadel side of things, and you openly call yourself an outside-context problem. You keep calling me the herald - for who? You called her the ‘Moonlit Shepherdess,’ right?”

“That is correct,” the Doll noted, nodding slowly. “Continue, if it pleases you.”

“Right. Right, okay,” Mordin said, pausing to breathe. “Most importantly, you didn’t deny the fact that I said I was in a cosmic horror story. So - so if I had to guess, you’re representing a race of oh god I can’t believe I’m actually thinking this eldritch creatures? Or at least some sort of beings who don’t, don’t quite exist in the same realm, or dimension, or - I think you mentioned a ‘plane,’ too - that we do. And, for some insane reason you think I’m going to, I don’t know, act as your peoples’ herald? Pave the way for your arrival?”

“Magnificently said!” The Doll clapped her hands, the sound echoing through the fields as she broke into a wide grin. “Nearly perfect, and done so with almost no direct or hard evidence. She was right to pick you, Mordin Solus - you will indeed make a wonderful herald, in my estimation.”

“If you think,” Mordin continued, tone going flat and his words slowing, “that I’m going to be corrupting people and making some sort of crazy ‘worship-the-old-gods’ sort of cult so the Citadel people are peeled open like some sort of fruit, then you and your moon-whatever are sorely mistaken.”

“Pardon me? I - oh, goodness.” The Doll shook her head and frowned. “I - we - intend no such thing, Mordin. You are a herald, not a traitor or turncoat. Your role, as I envision it, is to prepare your realm for our arrival, not to - to fatten it for the slaughter.”

“Uh-huh. And why should I believe there’s a difference,” Mordin noted, “when you won’t answer any of my damn questions directly?”

The Doll sighed. “Because I cannot. I, in literal terms, can not do so without causing you harm, the sort that cannot be undone. Even now, despite our efforts to prepare you-”

“-you mean the tumors and the blood-”

“-I do-”

“-which I’m still pissed that you jammed into me without my consent,” Mordin spat.

The Doll looked away, a melancholic expression and tone creeping into her. “For that, you have my apologies. If there was any other way, you can be assured we would have done so. Regardless, I have never lied to you. Your, ah, gifts, they will bring you no harm - I swear it upon my dignity and honour. How much of the hardships your body has faced is due to the unnecessary interventions of your well-wishing physicians, and how much is simply your body having difficulty acclimating to its newfound organs, I cannot say. I am no healing woman, after all.”

“So, what, these tumors, my blood, this is so that I can hear your crazy eldritch mind-melting knowledge without having my head explode or something?” Mordin snorted. “Sorry if I’m a little skeptical.”

“Outside-context problem, Mordin, as you might say,” the Doll replied with a shrug. “But it is the truth, whether you accept it or not. And yes - your intended joke about the overfilling of your head? It is far closer to uncomfortable truth than you might desire. But if you do not believe me, look into my eyes - or perhaps do not do so. You’ve been avoiding my gaze due to the aches and pains since laying eyes upon me, no?”

“I was meaning to ask you about that,” Mordin muttered. “You said taking your real form wouldn’t do me any harm, right?”

“A side-effect of my taking this shape,” she replied. “The mechanisms by which I hide my true face from you draws - if only barely - upon the same knowledge and power that the eyes within you will shield you from. If you desire a more strenuous test of my claims, then look at the moon with focus and clarity.”

Mordin looked back up at the strange, pulsating blue moon that hung low above the fields; for a few moments nothing happened-

-and then he fell out of his chair, clutching at his skull as ice-cold tendrils of searing pain tore through his mind; he wanted to scream, was screaming, nose bleeding, vomit rising-

-and he was okay, breathing heavily, as the Plain Doll laid her calming hands upon him once more.

“What - what - how - what is that thing?” Mordin managed in between shallow breaths. “You could have warned me that looking at the moon might be dangerous - I did it earlier - why would you - why?”

“She,” the Doll said gently as she once again lifted Mordin to his feet, “can conceal Her gifts, and was doing so until just now. Look again, and you will feel no pain.”

 

Mordin looked again, the moon’s soft pulses filling his vision - and this time, as the Doll had assured him, no horrors lay before him. In fact, the blue waves of light seemed almost soothing, compared to before.

“She meant you no harm. It was a demonstration,” the Doll continued softly, “of the dangers of knowing too well the things you are not ready for. A mind, unprotected by the eyes within you and the thick, rich blood that flows through you, would no doubt have been driven mad - or worse - rather than feeling crippling pain.”

“I’ve totally lost it,” Mordin murmured, shaking his head as he stared into his empty teacup. “This is insane. Totally, one-hundred percent insane.”

“Tsk, tsk. We have spoken on your obsession with sanity, little one,” the Doll chided. “But let us return to your questioning. I represent her,” she continued, gesturing at the moon above. “There are others, similar to her, once of her kin and flesh, but for now, let us simply speak of her as representative of her people.”

Mordin swallowed hard. “The Moonlit Shepherdess.”

“Yes. She has many names amongst us; she is the Moonlit Shepherdess, the Giver of Gifts, the Gentle Mother, the Pregnant Moon, the Lunar Womb. As you have experienced already, her mere appearance - let alone her physical presence - is enough to cause fatal pain and inspire madness in the unprepared,” the Doll noted. “And so, upon finding the people that share your neighbouring stars - the Citadel, yes? - she decided that it would be foolish, nay, ruinous to simply arrive upon your collective doorstep without taking precautions in the interest of your safety.”

“So you need a herald. Someone to...prepare things, so that it’s safe for her to arrive? That’s - that’s great. Fine. I get it. But why would you pick some salarian kid, of all people?” Mordin asked. “That makes no sense at all. I’m in no position to influence people, I’m from the shortest-lived race that has any position in galactic sociopolitics, and while my family’s not short on cash it’s not like our line is the wealthiest or most powerful around.”

The Doll chuckled, laughing behind a pale hand once more. “Little one, surely you do not believe that, of all things, social standing or the hoarding of currency means anything to me or the ones I represent.”

“No, I don’t,” Mordin replied calmly, “but if you need someone to, uh, smooth things out for your arrival, those things would be of great help, wouldn’t they? If I’m going with your story, it’s not like you lack the reach to, you know, ‘influence’ people anywhere in the galaxy. You could have picked a Councilor, or a head of state, or something.”

“We could have,” the Doll admitted. “But that, in and of itself, would be a problem, no? Assume we did as such, picked a person of great stature and standing in your society. No doubt it would be seen as a hostile intrusion, an attempt to unduly compromise someone for manipulative reasons. And, if all of a sudden, a well-known leader begins hearing voices, that person would no doubt inform their colleagues. Seek isolation. Dig in, so to speak.”

“I - I don’t agree, not entirely, but I guess I get where you’re coming from,” Mordin mumbled thoughtfully. “And I suppose you’re going to apply the same logic to the children of these people, too?”

“Yes. But those considerations are, ultimately, secondary. Whether you ended up being a scion of nobility, or an orphan borne of the utmost cruelty - that never factored into our decision. Her decision. What mattered most, my brave herald, was your mind. Your curiosity, your drive, your need to know more about the world around you. Your passion for the intellectual, your willingness to accept and consider things as they are presented, not as they are assumed.” The Doll nodded several times, humming for a moment. “Yes. Yes, my little one. You were chosen precisely because, even now, as we sit in this dreamscape over tea and beneath moonlight, you are thinking. Mulling things over. Seeing connections, exploring the what-if and the could-be, constructing the branches which stem from the tree of our connection.”

“How could you have known my character when I was a kid?” Mordin asked. “Or is the answer to that also something that’ll blow my skull open?”

“No, no, nothing so serious. Think of it as, ah, a mother’s intuition. She,” the Doll explained, nodding at the moon, “can sense these things, can feel the minds of others. Distance and the isolation of one’s mind - those things matter little to a being as great as her. Of course, it was never certain - and thus, we arrive at my offer.”

“You’re letting me back out of this, aren’t you?”

“I am,” the Doll replied, a small smile upon her face. “You are correct. This position was thrust upon you without your consent. You did not ask to be granted to burden of heraldship. This, I will admit, and for that I tender my apology. So - if at any time, from this point onwards, you no longer wish to be the Herald, to see and know and partake in the knowledge that is forbidden to others, you need only say so, and I shall take my leave.”

Mordin frowned, scratching his chin as he thought. “And what happens if I accept your offer, Plain Doll? You get rid of my brain tumors, clear out my blood, make me normal again? And then what? You pick someone else to be your messenger, right?”

“That is correct, little one. We can afford to wait. Concepts like time and mortality hold a very different meaning to beings like us,” the Doll replied. “I will admit, despite my understanding, that I will be sad to see you go, should you choose to leave. I have not birthed any children of my own, but I have nurtured others before - and having seen you grow from infant to a young man, I can say that it has been a pleasure making your acquaintance.”

A long silence.

Mordin pointed at the teapot. “Can I have some more tea?”

“Of course.” The Doll refilled his cup, and watched him sip at the drink. “I will also note that you may sever this connection whenever it pleases you, whether that is now, or upon your deathbed. It is your decision to make, when you wish it.”

“I have some questions.”

“I will do my best to answer them.”

“What other changes are going to happen to me?” Mordin gestured at his head. “The eye tumors, the blood, I’m not a fan of these...things. And if I need any more, ahem, gifts, from you in order to safely learn things, I need to know them ahead of time.”

“Those will be all you need. Once these eyes within you have finished growing and your blood becomes as thick and powerful as that of the Gentle Mother,” the Doll noted, “you will be able to, at least partially, view the truths which elude you at the moment. The rest, well - I will offer those to you in the future, but they remain optional. Gifts to be chosen, not thrust upon you.”

“Wait, hold on - the eyes within me? They’re not tumors?” Mordin exclaimed.

“No, they are not. I would not be so cruel as to inflict a cancer upon you, little one,” the Doll replied, aghast. “Perhaps your physicians think it so - they have certainly treated my gifts as if that were the case - but, no, they are indeed, eyes. Not quite the same as the ones you use to perceive the waking world, but functionally the same in shape, form and function.” The Doll made a distasteful expression, and her tone was the closest Mordin had ever heard to her expressing anger or displeasure. “If your surgeons and doctors have any sense, they will treat them as merely vestigial - an oddity - and leave them alone. As they should.”

“And my blood. You’re - you’re making it like that of your, uh, Moonlit Shepherdess? And I’m not going to have any further side effects from my blood having the consistency of pudding?” Mordin leaned forward. “I’m serious, passing out every day for nearly eight hours is getting kind of annoying.”

“Your body will acclimate, I assure you. The eyes and the blood, in tandem, are the key to your ability to be Insightful, in the truest sense,” the Doll reassured. “The changes, from that point, will be subtler. You will require less rest - less than your kin, even. Your wounds will heal faster. Your mind will remain sharper for longer periods of time. And, perhaps most importantly - if you will it, your blood can spread the gifts I have given you; if you will it, consuming the blood of others can strengthen your mind, body and soul.”

“Okay, uh, superpowers, that’s cool. Turning into something out of a horror vid, not so much.”

“A - a vampire - well, if you wish to think of it that way, I suppose you could,” the Doll admitted with a small smirk. “But, like I noted, it is a thing you choose to do. It is not imposed. Oh, and one more thing - you may return here when you sleep, as your consciousness fades. You may consider this place a second home, if you will. Its amenities - and my personhood - will remain in this realm for as long as you desire.”

“You never did say what this dream place exactly was. The Herald’s Dream, you called it,” Mordin mused aloud.

“It is exactly as its name describes. A dream, for you and you alone. Many have passed through it - it was not always known as the Herald’s Dream - but it is here that you can find respite and plan ahead for your journeys into the waking world. After all, dreams, little one, are powerful things,” the Doll said gently. “They are the space in which a singular person can dare to become more than they are told they can be.”

“And you’re back to being corny again,” Mordin snorted.

“You never did answer my question as to what the properties of corn have to do with my speech,” the Doll replied, tilting her head. “Will you indulge my curiosity?”

“It means, like - uh, hackneyed? Overly sentimental? Stale? I don’t know how else to describe it,” Mordin admitted.

“Overly sentimental. Hmm. Well, I will say that, once, I was told that a mere doll could not feel such things, you know,” the Doll said proudly. “In any case - there is the mansion, the spiral hill, and the graveyard. Perhaps, in time, there will be more for you to make use of; for now, let me say simply that the line between this land and the one you inhabit when you are awake need not be as concrete as you believe it to be.”

Mordin sighed. “You know, the implications of that are actually kind of terrifying to think about.”

“You seem undisturbed, little one.”

“Plain Doll, you’ve been talking to me, in my head, since I was two. I have eyes in my head and three days out of the week I’ve got blood that you could eat with a fork. I'm drinking tea with a not-salarian woman who's name is 'Plain Doll.' Oh, and apparently I’m the herald for a god out of a cosmic horror story who’s also the moon, and something called the ‘Lunar Womb.’ My tolerance for strange is pretty good.” Mordin stared off into the distance for a few moments, then frowned. “I have another question.”

“Of course.”

“What do I have to do, as a herald? You’ve never actually clarified what that entails.”

“Because I cannot.”

“Thanks. That’s very helpful.”

“I do not mean to be rude, or vague - I simply do not know,” the Plain Doll replied, shaking her head. “This meeting, between your worlds and my own, with the many different races and cultures and peoples which share your plane? It is rather unlike anything in my experience. Obviously the easiest thing to do would be to simply spread the gift of your blood to whoever will take it, but even I can see that such a method would be, ah, troublesome in its ramifications.

“You’re kidding me,” Mordin groaned. “So you’ve got no idea what to do.”

“I did not say that,” the Doll replied, affecting a near-pout, “but I will admit that, lacking context, I am currently unsure as how to proceed best in a way which will ensure peace and tranquility as you carry out your duties. It is no matter - we have time, after all.”

“I’m not immortal, you know.”

“That can be fixed, if you desire it.”

Mordin sighed, again. “Have you ever listened to yourself? You’re very nice, you know. And also terrifying.”

The Doll tapped her fingers on the table, frowned. “I do not mean to scare anyone.”

“I know.”

Another long silence.

“Alright. Alright, fine,” Mordin said slowly. “Let’s - let’s say for now, that I decide to stay on as - as herald for your moon...thing. But my conditions apply, and as soon as my body’s ready I want answers. Real ones. Clear?”

“Absolutely. You have my word, Mordin,” the Doll replied with a seated bow. “I promise you - no further gifts without prior notice, and a pledge to reveal whatever I can to you, as you are capable.”

“And I’m guessing you stay in my head?”

“If you no longer desire my companionship during your waking hours, I will remain here patiently for your return,” the Doll noted. “You need but ask, and similarly, if you request my return, I will come.” She smiled, eyes uncomfortably dim and bright and pale. “After all, I am always by your side.”

Mordin rubbed at his face. “Oh, man. Okay. Great. Uh, I’d love to stay and explore whatever this dream-thing is, but frankly I think I’ve had enough revelations for the day. How do I leave this...whatever this place is?”

“The headstone next to the mansion’s entrance,” the Doll replied, gesturing up the cobblestone path towards the massive, ancient-looking house which loomed above the courtyard. “Simply touch it, think of your home in the waking world, and you will be swiftly returned from whence you came.”

“Okay. I’m, uh, going to leave, if that’s fine.”

“Of course, my little one. Go now, and gather your strength,” the Doll said with a wide smile. “Rest. Think. You have much to consider, I’m sure.”

Mordin got up from the chair and made his way over to the headstone; it was unmarked and unremarkable, little more than a square block of smooth, grey stone. He glanced over his shoulder to find the Doll staring up at the moon with a vacant look and a smile; her mouth was moving slightly, as though she were speaking beneath her breath to the moon itself.

Mordin touched the headstone.

He opened his eyes.

The door burst open, and Aenon Solus marched into the small, meticulously-kept bedroom with arms spread and a smile upon his face. “Good morning, Mordin! So, you ready for another day?” Aenon said, stomping loudly over to the window and setting the windows to be near-transparent. “Come on - I’m making breakfast today, whatever you want.”

“I’m not hungry, actually,” Mordin murmured, staring at the ceiling. “Maybe some tea would be nice.”

 

 


	2. V1-B2: Childhood Ignorance / Didactic

 

  
**VOLUME ONE: CHILDHOOD IGNORANCE  
BOOK TWO: DIDACTIC**

**Talat, Sur’Kesh  
18th of Sun  
2659 Galactic Standard**

 

“Listen, kid. You’re sharp. Very sharp. Got a good head on your shoulders, strong moral compass, excellent character, the works. Keep at it, and I guarantee you’ll be in the Intelligence Services the second you graduate from university,” the old man sitting across the desk said with a shake of his head. “Hells, you ask me, I think you’re Special Tasks Group material. Fast-track, and everything.”

Mordin sighed. “I’m sensing a but here, sir.”

“Mordin, you’re ten. It’s been two weeks since you finished secondary schooling. Two.”

“And? I checked, Director Solus - junior IS positions occupying the bottom four pay-grades don’t require a university degree,” Mordin pressed. “I passed all of the entry examinations - you can’t just deny my application without a reason.”

“One, I thought I said to call me Maesat. Two, just because those jobs don't  _need_  a degree, that doesn't mean you can get in without one. Three, I’m the director of Personnel Acquisition - I can do as I damn well please,” the old man replied, rubbing at his face. “I’m serious, Mordin, I’m not taking you on until you’ve got a couple more years on you. Your uncle would kill me with his bare hands if he found out I was bringing you into the intelligence community without even trying to live civilian life for a few years.”

“This is ridiculous,” Mordin grumbled. “I’m not asking to be out operating out in the Terminus with the STG - what’s the harm in having a desk job?”

“The harm, Mordin, is that we both know the STG is going to snatch you up as soon as they figure out they’ve got material like you to work with. Accelerated secondary student with top marks in first and second year undergraduate classes, near-perfect personality metrics and high marks in the sims, despite only having just recovered from brain cancer and gods know what else?” Maesat snorted. “Come on. I’m not stupid. You want it. You know they’ll scout you out, if they haven’t already.”

“I thought you were in charge of personnel transfers,” Mordin pointed out. “Can’t you take me in, put a freeze on my status?”

“How about you try telling a bunch of STG operators that they don’t get the personnel they want,” Maesat ground out, “because I’m supposed to be keeping a relative’s kid out of the line of fire? You think that’s going to go over well?”

Mordin didn’t respond.

“Look - I’m not asking you to follow your uncle into the government, or to live a life as a professor, or anything. Just - take a few years. Live your life. Be normal, or as close to normal as you can get. Once you get into this life, you don’t ever really leave it,” Maesat continued, his tone softening. “I promise. Come back in a year or few, and I’ll consider your application like anyone else’s.”

“Fine, fine, I get it,” Mordin huffed.

“Why are you gunning so hard for this, anyways?” Maesat asked, taking a drink of water from the bottle on his desk. “Aenon never mentioned anything about you wanting to go into intelligence work when you were younger.”

“I want to help people. Give back to the Union in return for what they gave me,” Mordin explained, eyes bright and tone solemn. “Sure, they ended up taking me off the medications and everything, but from the minute I was born the Union was taking care of me. I have a debt to pay.”

“There are other ways of giving back to the community,” Maesat sighed. “Military’s an option. Government work. Civic enterprise. You get the idea.”

“It was the most direct method I could think of.”

The two stared at each other for a long moment; it was Maesat who looked away first.

“I know when to back off,” Mordin muttered.

“Good. You want in, that’s something you’ll need to learn.” Maesat’s frown shifted into a small smile, and he tapped his desk with his fingers. “Trust me, Mordin - the IS isn’t going anywhere - I mean, if it does, you’ve got bigger problems than looking for a job. It’ll be here when you come back, and once you’re ready I know you’ll be a perfect fit.”

“I appreciate it,” Mordin said, getting up from his chair and reaching across the desk to clasp arms with Maesat. “Thanks.”

Maesat nodded, patting the young man on the back. “No problem. You know the way out?”

“I do.”

"Take care, Mordin - and say hello to Aenon for me, alright?"

"I will, Maesat. Thanks."

Mordin took his leave, slowly making his way through the crowded corridors of the Salarian Union Intelligence Services headquarters; in the past week he’d been through enough times that some of the workers there nodded and waved at him, and despite his frustration he waved back, returning their smiles. Even the receptionist on duty on the ground floor gave him a goodbye, and as he exited the building into the bustling, sunlit streets of downtown Talat his frustration filtered down into something less caustic.

_Well that didn’t work. Not that I was expecting it to, but still._

_Youth is as much an impediment as it is a boon_ , the Plain Doll noted plainly without judgement. _I still believe it would behoove you to experience, even if only for a moment, as normal an existence as you will find as Her herald. A spymaster’s life, from my experience, is a difficult one, filled with as much sorrow as intrigue. In your plane - where the spy has the entire cosmos to be wary of, not merely a single world - there will be no respite._

_Does a Herald really have time for serious rest and relaxation? And besides, ‘normal’ stopped being a priority a long time ago, Plain Doll. Never was going to work out that way._

_I suppose there is some truth to that. What passes for normalcy to me, I imagine, is nothing of the sort for you. For now, at least. In time, who can say?_

_I need to ascend the Union’s ladder, and the faster the better. As much as the ‘curse of agelessness,’ as you put it, could be handy, it’d also raise questions I wouldn’t be able to answer without laying out some groundwork._

_Ahh._

_Hmm. Guess I’ll head home, or-_

Mordin froze mid-thought as he felt some sort of intent - determined, steely resolve, with a hint of sated desire - angling towards him; he quickly shifted from where he was standing, off to the side of Intelligence Services building’s entrance, to a nearby corner where he’d be able to narrow down anyone approaching. In short order he identified the likely source - a salarian man, stocky and well-built and dressed in a sleeveless brown jacket, heading straight towards him. By Mordin's best estimate, he was maybe in his mid-to-late thirties, and despite his casual clothes Mordin was certain he could make out the faint imprint of a concealed handgun near the man's waist.

_Your instinct grows stronger, little one. Excellent._

_Let’s hope we’re in good company. Something's not okay here._

_Worry not, herald. Conflict, too, can inspire growth._

_Getting shot in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, really isn't what I'm going for at the moment._

“Mordin Solus?” The man called out to him as she approached, a friendly smile on his face. “That you?”

“Sure,” Mordin replied, keeping his tone and expression polite, if not warm. “Can I help you?”

“I’ve been looking for you, Mr. Solus. Ah, where are my manners - Daetan Naeyori,” the man said, extending a hand. Mordin took the offer, clasping arms with the stranger, searching his eyes and smile as he did-

_-shit, he’s lying. That’s not your real name - who are you really?-_

-and frowned. “Sorry. You have me at a disadvantage - I don’t know you.”

“I’d be surprised if you did,” ‘Daetan’ replied with a nod. “I’m with the Ministry of Defense’s Logistics and Procurement Division - been working as a liaison with IS for a while now.”

Mordin felt the insides of his skull twitch, the back of his eyes wriggle in their sockets.  _Another lie. Why hide something like that? Smells - this smells off._

“Couldn’t help but notice you skulking around here for the past week, so I decided to do a little digging - and aren’t you an interesting kid. Near-perfect grades, near-perfect scores on physical and stress-testing IS sims, fantastic physical review for someone who fought off cancer and a bunch of other junk. Glowing recommendations from more than a few people in high places. Not going to lie, I was impressed,” the 'Daetan' noted with a knowing nod.

“Thanks, I guess?” Mordin said sheepishly. “Sorry, I don’t really know what to say.”

“No worries, kid - I don’t like flattery either. I’ll cut the crap. I’m here to offer you a job,” the man said with a wry grin. “Couldn’t help but overhear that you’ve been gunning to get yourself an IS job, but for whatever reason they don’t want to hire some kid fresh out of secondary. Me - and my team - on the other hand, I’ve got no problem with that.” He raised his hands before Mordin could reply, and shook his massive head. “Now - let me finish. It’s a desk job. It’s pretty boring - mostly sorting files and looking up old reports, but it pays decently, the benefits are good and there’s a lot of on-the-job training and networking. You’d be on contract for a year to start - perfect way to get your foot in the door, eh?”

Mordin’s blood was seething with unease; it was all he could do to keep from shaking his limbs to get the agitation out. Still, he marshaled himself, as he’d practiced for endless hours within his dreams, and affected a surprised look.

“Wow. Excuse me. Uh, that’s very generous of you, sir,” Mordin stammered. “But, uh, well, my meeting today with Maesa - I mean, Director Solus - was kind of eye-opening. Honestly I think I might stick to my old plan and finish an undergraduate degree before jumping into the workforce.”

“Well that’s kind of a shame,” ‘Daetan’ replied with a frown. “Look - I’m heading offworld for two weeks, but when I get back, and if you’ve changed your mind, let me know.” With a small flourish he pulled a small case out from within his coat and slid a small, metal card out of it, handing it over to Mordin. “I can hold onto that spot for you until then; after that, no promises. Just keep it in mind, okay?”

“Sure thing, Mr. Naeyori. I’ll do that,” Mordin replied, glancing at the card; engraved on it were a series of mail addresses and contact IDs. “Thanks for the offer.”

“No problem. Hope to hear back from you, kid,” Daetan said as he tucked the card case back in his coat. “I gotta run - thanks for hearing me out.”

“Thanks,” Mordin muttered as the man took off back into the crowds of pedestrians on the street. He examined the card again, sniffed at it, then tucked it into his coat pocket with a frown on his face.

_That was unsettling. And coming from me that's not a good sign, I bet._

_Not all who lie do so for malicious reasons. Do you, indeed, not do so on a daily basis?_

_I suppose. Still rubs me the wrong way. Been a while since I started listening to the blood. It’s rarely wrong._

_It tells you to be cautious, not dismissive. Wary, not hesitant._

_I’m not dismissing the guy. Just being sure I cover all my angles. I’m laying the foundations now - it’s a critical time. Small mistakes now might grow into big problems later._

_So? What is your next course of action?_

“Guess I’ll head home,” Mordin said aloud. “Could use a nap.” From the back of his mind he could hear the Plain Doll chuckle slightly, and with a thin smile he descended the steps leading to the IS building and was swept away into the crowds below. It was only a quick walk to the nearest train station, and soon enough he was back at his apartment block, quiet and deserted during the midday lull. He quickly returned to the apartment he and his uncle shared, kicked off his boots and slid out of his jacket, then flopped onto his bed; first, he queued up his omnitool, and ran a cursory search for Daetan Naeyori through a mix of search engines, government personnel indexes and networking sites.

_Nothing besides some small-time actor and some dead politician from ages ago. Figures,_  he thought, shutting the device off before closing his eyes.

When he reopened them, he was home - truly home.

Once he’d learned that the Herald’s Dream was, indeed, as malleable as he desired - save for the constants of the graveyard and the mansion-upon-the-hill, he’d quickly set to work fashioning himself an operations centre. The Plain Doll had expressed what he could only think of as mild annoyance that he spurned the comforts and facilities within the mansion, but its libraries and studies were too cramped, too antiquated for his liking.

So he’d fashioned an extension -  _just doing a little remodeling,_  as he’d put it. From the mansion’s old sunroom (which, frankly, still made no sense considering the fact that this dream seemed to be stuck in perpetual twilight) he’d made his will manifest, fashioning a new segment of steel-glass construction which jutted out of the side of the mansion, hanging over the edge of the spiral hill’s peak. As he ascended the spiral hill and entered the courtyard, he waved at the Plain Doll, who was - as always - seated at her table, teapot steaming and cups at the ready.

“Welcome home, brave Herald,” she said, nodding slightly. “I have tea, if you wish it.”

“Of course. Still wish you’d let me steal your recipe,” Mordin muttered as he sat down and drained the cup in a single draw. “I’m not as squeamish as I used to be about these things.”

“Sadly, I am afraid the ingredients are beyond your reach. For now, at least,” the Doll replied with a shrug and smile. “Perhaps, if your work goes the right way - or wrong, depending on how you conceive of it, I suppose - it will be possible to imbibe the true beverage in the waking world. Though, on reflection, I imagine its popularity might be quite limited at first, given its origins.”

“Shame,” Mordin sighed. “Blood, honey, herbs. What else is in there, eh?"

"Your guess is mostly correct, little one. But there are many sorts of honeys, even more kinds of herbs, and as for blood - well, it is as varied in kind as it is in power."

"I'll figure it out one day, I'm telling you. Anyways, I’ll be in the study.”

“ _Your_  study,” the Doll clarified. “Not  _the_ study.”

“Yes, yes, right, I’m sorry,  _my_  study. You’re more than welcome to sulk out here,” Mordin chuckled.

“How unkind of you to insinuate that I might stoop to sulking,” she replied, smiling. “Go on, then.”

Mordin nodded and entered the sunroom through its separate entrance, pushing past the various plants and chairs within to the decidedly out-of-place security hatch at the far side of the room; it hissed open as he approached, revealing a pristine, sparsely decorated hospital-white chamber which housed a single office chair in the centre and a stack of thick, crimson cushions in the right corner closest to the door. He walked in, sat down at the chair, and waved his hands; moments later, holographic displays and boards lit up all around him, showing everything from news articles and photographs of various persons, to complex webs of interconnected topics and massive, interwoven spreadsheet-flowcharts. A quick thought manifested the metal business card he’d received earlier in front of him, and he leaned back in the chair, eyes narrowed in focus.

“You intend to seek out this man,” the Plain Doll’s voice said, coming from behind him.

“Yes.” He glanced backwards to see her at her lounging on the cushions, her usual half-smile splayed across her face. “Haven’t had a gut check that bad since last year.” Thinking in silence for several minutes, Mordin then began pulling up various memories from the previous week, scanning several at the same time, until finally he sighed and let out a frustrated groan.

“Mmm?”

“That guy's been shadowing me for the past week,” Mordin grumbled. “No idea how I missed it, either.”

“Your instincts are not honed, little one,” the Doll noted. “You detect things beyond your sight when you seek them, but the unconscious truths are not yet known to you in the same way a hunter senses its prey. It will come, in time, with practice."

“Would have been handy anyhow. So. Daetan Naeyori, or whatever your real name is - hmm. He only shows when I’m near the IS building? Not impossible. Also possible that he or his friends could be doing surveillance - but - hmm. Don’t want to be paranoid about this, either.” Mordin rubbed at his chin, rolling his eyes as he cleared his mind. “A conundrum. A real conundrum. Shit. I can - I wonder if I could trace his footsteps, ingress routes - hmm.”

For what felt like hours, Mordin sifted through his photographic memories, trying to piece together some sort of lead on the mystery man; ultimately, he was left with only a half-remembered slice, partially out of his view, of ‘Daetan’ getting into an private air-taxi.

“That’s it, then. Taxi’s my only lead,” Mordin sighed. “Going to have to play sneaky, I guess. Nothing like learning on the job?”

“That is the correct attitude, little one.” The Plain Doll stirred, easing herself into a sitting position, and smiled. “Failure can be the greatest teacher.”

Mordin laughed slightly, shaking his head. “Good to know you’ve got that much faith in me.”

“I do. You might be surprised at how many failures even the greatest persons I know have endured to reach their standing,” the Doll replied with a shrug.

“Somehow I don’t think this gentleman's someone who’s big on forgiving and forgetting. He had a concealed handgun beneath his jacket and carried himself like he had some serious combat training,” Mordin noted, deep in thought. “Failure in this case might mean getting shot, which I’d really like to avoid.”

“Many before you have been fired upon and survived to achieve great things,” the Doll noted. "Your blood and your eyes and your mind may not be weapons or shields in the traditional sense, but I wager they will serve you with exceptional worth."

“I’d still rather not take the chance of seeing what happens when my brains get blown out,” Mordin snorted. “Even if I was immortal, I imagine not being dead and also not having a head might not be the best time.”

“We can test that theory in the safety of the dream, if such experiments are your desire,” the Doll noted. “Here, you are immune to death, at least in the traditional sense.”

“Yeah, no. I’d rather not.”

“Fair enough.” Returning to her lounging, the Doll closed her eyes. “I will rest, if you intend to return to your studies.”

“I might just do that,” Mordin muttered, returning to his mental maps. “Got some stupid plans to concoct.”

 

 

* * *

 

**Talat, Sur’Kesh  
19th of Sun  
2659 Galactic Standard**

“Number thirty-six, calling number thirty-six, customer service desk number two.”

Mordin got up from his seat in the nearly-empty waiting area and made his way over to the employee sitting behind desk number two; he looked fairly young, his yellow-black uniform was pristine and even from a distance Mordin could sense the professional boredom radiating off him. Making sure to put a small hint of unease and sheepishness in his gait, Mordin sat down and sighed.

The man tapped at a few keys on his terminal and nodded, glancing at Mordin. “My name is Ganik, and I’ll be your customer service representative today. How can I help you?”

“Uh, hi there,” Mordin muttered. “Name’s Yaekol. I, uh, kind of lost a really important micro-OSD a few days ago and I think I might have left it in the cab I took, and I was wondering if I could, you know, uh, take a look in the car to see if it’s there?”

Ganik blinked and grunted slightly. “A few days? How long ago was this? Company policy is to wipe public access records every few days, sir. Even if you have the receipt and vehicle ID I’m afraid I can’t help you - not to mention it’s against policy to allow access to the vehicle bay.

“Look, I know, I know, but I’m telling you, I’ve got like six term papers on there and - I know I’m stupid - I didn’t back them up anywhere else. I’m screwed if I lose that thing,” Mordin begged.

Ganik blinked, his tone switching from bored to curious in an instant. “Wait, for real? You’re joking.”

“Nope. First year in university and I’m going to be knocked out of my program and lose my scholarship at this rate,” Mordin groaned. “I already checked with the lost and found service, like, five times, too. Nothing. Guy at that office said the cleaners sometimes miss small things inside the cushions or in the trunks, so, you know.” Mordin trailed off and rubbed at his chin. “I’m just asking for the chance to look. Really don’t want to cram six papers into three days.”

“Dude, I feel you. Stupid mistake, though,” Ganik muttered, wincing. “Uh, look - okay, let me see what I can do for you. You got that receipt number?”

“No,” Mordin admitted. “Fam got me a prepaid chit for my birthday, and I tossed it the day after I took the ride. I do have the vehicle ID, though.”

Ganik whistled. “Thank the gods - you’d be shit out of luck without the ID. Alright, what is it?”

“Seven, seven, J, one, zero, two, Q, N, Q, N, eight."

“Got it. Let’s see here...you’re in luck, pal, the car came off rotation about an hour ago. Inspection crews should be done soon - just have a seat, and I’ll see if I can’t get the guys to park it out front,” Ganik said, tapping away at his console. “I can give you a few minutes to look. Sound good?”

“You, Ganik, are a lifesaver,” Mordin exclaimed, eyes bright. “Thank you so much, man.”

“Don’t thank me yet - you haven’t found your OSD,” Ganik protested. “But, uh, hey, if you could fill out a customer service feedback form on your way out?”

“For sure. Totally. Glowing reviews all the way,” Mordin reassured him.

“Thanks. Appreciate it. Just have a seat and I’ll get one of the mechanics to call you out, alright?” Ganik flashed Mordin a smile before returning to his previous, near-blank expression, and cleared his throat as Mordin stood up. “Number thirty-seven, calling number thirty-seven, customer service desk two!”

_Everything’s working so far,_  Mordin thought as he sat back down.  _Great. Can’t wait for this to go horribly wrong._

_Fatalism can cripple even the mightiest mind,_  the Doll chided.

_Just trying to be realistic about my chances here._

_In the face of crushing adversity, there is no greater response than unflinching optimism, little one._

_That makes absolutely no sense._

_You will, in time, understand._

_Doesn’t help me now, though._

_In that, I suppose you are correct. Regardless, I can find no fault in your acting, or your grasp of spycraft; what comes next is beyond my understanding, I will admit._

_Still don’t get how programming is something a, uh, whatever you are, has a hard time grasping. It’s not rocket science, at least in theory._

_I was under the impression that rocketry is quite simple, though. I have seen many combine projectiles, explosives and other combustibles to great effect._

_That’s, uh, not what rocket science is._

_Once again, I am afraid that our experiences conflict in their details. Perhaps you ought to consult the study’s many tomes, in order to better understand my view?_

_Look, the last time I went in there and picked out a book, it was a door-stopper text about how to build a….cleaver-chainsaw-shotgun thing. Not exactly something I’m going to find useful._

_I can think of several situations in which the Veincaller might serve you well. Nonetheless, there is more in the study than treatises on the construction of weaponry, little one. The knowledge contained within is quite extensive._

_Well I have been reading up on, uh, ‘blood alchemy,’ and stuff. That seems pretty usefu-_

“Uh, Yaekol?” The voice, gruff and raspy, caught Mordin’s attention, and he looked up to see a jumpsuit-clad mechanic standing in the doorway of the office. “Kid, I got the car you wanted to see. I haven’t got all day and we need that one back in rotation not long from now, so I’d get a move on.”

“Oh, uh, thanks!” Mordin jumped to his feet and followed the mechanic out into the open-air station where the majority of the Atmos Transport cab fleet was kept, stopping a few cars down from the customer service office.

“Here’s your cab,” the mechanic grumbled, jerking his head at the red air-taxi in front of them. “I need to take care of some other stuff. Be back in ten minutes, tops. When I’m back, you’re done, whether or not you find whatever it is you lost. Got it?”

“Yup, got it,” Mordin replied. “Thanks.”

“Whatever.” The mechanic took off at a jog towards the gated-off vehicle bay at the far end of the station, and Mordin sighed.

“Hope I can find this thing,” he said as he opened the back seat doors. Making a show of looking in the back seat’s cushions, he carefully angled himself away from the four cameras he knew were positioned on the ceiling, and made a quick swiping gesture over his left arm; his omnitool remained hidden, but a small chime in his ears left Mordin with a smile he had to suppress. Replacing the cushions, he then made his way back out of the car and turned his attention on the trunk, rummaging around until, about a minute later, another chime played in his ear. Careful not to let his body language slip, Mordin carefully released the small micro-OSD he’d kept tucked inside his sleeves, let it fall onto the trunk’s padded cushions, then picked it up, cheering and hollering. A third chime sounded, followed by a a click-click-click, and Mordin’s grin only grew.

_Jackpot. Can’t believe that worked._

_Did I not advise optimism?_

_No need to rub it in._

In short order the mechanic returned, looked at the wide grin on Mordin’s face and smirked. “You found whatever you were looking for?”

“I sure did. Thanks, man,” Mordin said, nodding. “You and Ganik really helped me out of a jam.”

“Good. Now scram - I gotta get this thing back into rotation,” the mechanic noted, jumping into the car. Mordin watched it go before heading off towards the transitway that was two blocks away from the cab station, filling out a glowing review of Ganik’s help on his omnitool as he walked. It was nearly noon when he returned home, and after a quick check on his investments Mordin got to work. Sitting at the desk in his bedroom, Mordin popped open the case of the scratch-built computer he’d put together over the last year, and disconnected its networking module before swapping the primary drive bay out with the secondary one (which itself had been sitting unused, tucked behind the battery.)

Booting up the terminal, Mordin placed his left hand over the receiver-plate built into the machine’s case, transferring the files he’d skimmed out of the taxi’s onboard computer onto his own. Within minutes, his display was filled with maps, travel data, and most importantly, a log of every trip the vehicle had taken in the last week.

“Huh.” _Lot more stuff saved on here then I thought there’d be_ , Mordin thought with a frown.  _Most of it isn’t even encrypted? Be a nasty lawsuit if this got out. Could come in handy._

_Your first true taste of challenge, of conflict, and you already seek leverage over those who are not your enemies._

_Not my fault the company’s being negligent._

_I was expressing my approval, little one. A herald you may be first, but without question you will face foes, many of whom will be former allies or neutral parties. Hunting may not be your purpose, but I have no doubt that you will play the role many a time in the days to come._

_You know,_  Mordin mused as he dug through the vehicle’s logs, _the more hints you drop about the world, or plane, or whatever place you’re from, the worse it sounds._

_  
Oh, fear not, little one. My origin point is a place of kindness, love and jolly cooperation - but it was not always so, and neither did the change come about without a great deal of struggle and suffering on the parts of many._ The Plain Doll paused for a moment, and Mordin could see her nodding to herself within his mind.  _Yes. Yes, it was so. Those - and those things - which did not love the beings I called my kin and kith were negotiated with. Those who could not be negotiated with saw reason. And those too far gone to see reason were expelled from our sight. And those who could not be moved, were killed. We slew our nightmares, little one, in order to gain our eternal calm._

_That’s not at all ominous and vaguely unsettling._

_I thought, personally, that as a concept it would bring you cheer and reassurance - that, with love, compassion, and the resolve to back those two, any goal can be achieved._

_I suppose. But the innate moral story of any cosmic horror story is that us fleshy, soft-brained mortals can’t fight back against the greater forces of the universe, isn’t it? Mind you, I’ve made my peace with things, and the knowledge you’ve given me - so far - has helped, but sometimes I find it odd that you and your eldritch...family? I guess? Have such a gentle way of looking at things._

_There is no oddity to my thinking, little one. Even the highest upon the high of the beings which exist throughout the many planes of existence subscribe to the same basic wants, needs and desires,_ the Plain Doll replied, _though I will admit certain concepts do not translate in a very direct manner. You would be surprised, I think, to see that even beings who exist beyond such paltry concepts as time, space, distance, mortality and thought want much the same things mortal beings do._

_Like what? Somehow I find it hard to believe that, you know, Ur-Nath, the Sound Beyond Thought Who Is Formless And Formed, gets a hankering for sandwiches, or needs to use the bathroom. Or worries about its taxes._

_I am not aware of this Ur-Nath you speak of._

_From a book. It’s an example._

_Ahh. Even so, I am aware of beings who are very similar to your chosen example - and yes, they may not desire the consumption of a sandwich, and they do not have bodily functions as you do - but the basics remain. A desire for progeny. A desire for knowledge. A desire for security. A desire for kin and kith. Not, of course, in the same manner or scale that you might have those things, but you understand, I am sure._

_Understand, sure. But I’m taking this on faith. It isn’t as though I can really comprehend this stuff beyond you just telling me that’s how it is. Not that I don’t believe you._

There was a mental silence for a few moments, as Mordin was left alone with only the barely-audible hum of his computer and the loneliness of his own thoughts.

_In time,_  the Plain Doll said in a calm, soothing tone.  _In time. I promised you this, and in all the years since my creation I have never broken an oath. Your inner eyes approach maturity. Your blood is rich and strong. Your soul is nearly ready. Soon, little one. So soon._

Mordin sighed as he continued his search.  _I can’t tell if your whole ‘soon’ thing is endearing, or really, really creepy._

_I do not intend to frighten._

_I know you don’t, Plain Doll, and I wasn’t_  - “Aha! There we go,” Mordin exclaimed, jerking upright in his seat. “Here we go - got a pickup address, time of day - oh, great.”

_Is there an issue?_

“Of course it has to be a mansion in the middle of the Rakana Bluffs,” Mordin hissed. “Fantastic.”  _It’s a fancy neighbourhood, big houses, lots of rich people. Which means security and eyes everywhere and - I was just hoping this would be easy. Now? Who - what am I even doing? I have no idea who this guy is, who he works for, why, how he knows me-_

_-you are not obligated to investigate this stranger on your own, you know._

_I’m aware of that._

_Do you not trust the authorities available to you?_

_I do! I just - I don’t know. Something’s off, I can smell it, I can taste it. I think about going to Old Man Maesat, or Aenon, or any of my other relatives, and I just - I just feel that itch in my skull, that wriggling in my skin. You yourself said it. Trust the blood._

_So I did - and yet, you are unused to the richness of your blood and the Insight granted to you by your inner eyes,_ the Doll noted. _Never have you hunted prey - not truly, anyhow._

_Well I’m sorry I don’t run around with one of your crazy sword-gun-chainsaw-things and hunt...beasts, or whatever it is you keep talking about._

_I meant no offense, little one. Merely that, for your first hunt, you have chosen a task of complexity; were this the sort of excursion which would see you slay a beast or man in open combat, at least it would only be your mettle and will to survive being tested. Here you have challenged a hunt involving spycraft and infiltration and the like - no easy feats, even for warriors unused to such things as violence._

Mordin memorized the address on his display before switching the computer off and resetting the position of its modules to their usual places; once he was done, he simply sat in his chair, spinning it slowly as he stared blankly at the ceiling, the plans he wanted to formulate slipping away from his grasp.

Minutes - maybe more - passed.

He grew dizzy after several spins and stopped, flopping onto his bed and rubbing at his eyes.

The Plain Doll, he thought, was not wrong - and yet neither was he. His blood was writhing, his mind was uneasy and if he focused - truly focused - on alerting someone in power Mordin swore he could feel the nearly-matured eyes within his skull wriggling and rolling.

He swore several times at nothing in particular, before gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes.

When he returned to the Dream, Mordin nearly jumped when he realized the Doll was waiting for him at the base of the spiral hill, hands held in her lap as she sat on a stone near the open gates.

“Plain Doll,” Mordin muttered.

She nodded, smiled. “Come, little one.” With surprising swiftness and characteristic grace, the marble-skinned woman got to her feet, and began walking through the endless fields towards the graveyard; Mordin hesitated for a few moments, before trailing behind. Together they walked in silence for long minutes, until at last they arrived at the place which Mordin had only been two twice in person. It was a simple place which affected an atmosphere of solemn, sacred weight; a semi-circle of square gravestones, marked with characters Mordin could not read, all clustered around a small, unmarked rectangular tower in the centre of the graveyard.

It made him uncomfortable in a way that real graveyards didn’t.

“Do you see it now, little one?” The Doll looked at him over her shoulder, her terrible, soothing gaze boring into his.

There was no pain when he looked back into her eyes.

Mordin frowned. “See what?” A quick glance around the graveyard revealed nothing different; redoubling his efforts, he inspected his surroundings more closely, and saw, he saw, he saw, he saw, he saw, he saw, he saw.

He saw.

He saw it.

The unmarked tower was marked. A simple eye, within an eye, speared by light and line, carved in red, carved in black, carved in white, engraved in gold, drawn in red, red, red, red, red, red, red, red, pulsing endless waves of beauteous, singing, tempting, caressing, silken blue. Moon blue. Moonlit blue. Moon lit blue.

“I see it,” Mordin whispered. I see it. “What - what is - it’s beautiful, Plain Doll, it’s so, so beautiful. I hear it. I hear it a - a - and I - I see it. It wasn’t here before. It wasn’t - it wasn’t here before.”

A sob, choked down, his eyes watering.

“Plain Doll. I see it,” Mordin said, voice wavering as he, slowly, slightly, barely began to calm. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, I see it. This - this is what you meant? About the eyes and the blood granting me Insight?”

She was behind him, now, holding him in a soft, gentle embrace. “Yes, little one. This is what I meant.”

“Why show me this? Why now?”

“You are nervous.”

“Yes.” For the first time in years, maybe, he did not hold back his tears. "I'm so fucking scared."

“Your are Her herald. Herald. In its full meaning and possessed of great gravity,” the Doll whispered, resting her head on top of his. “Fear for your kin and kith, if they are in danger. But when you imagine yourself, conceive of yourself in the face of danger - you know no fear. It is impossible. Worry, concern, yes - but never fear.”

“I don’t know - I feel - I’m over my head in this right?” Mordin managed “I - I want to just, just hand this over to Aenon or tell the police or something. But I can’t. I just can’t. I need to do this.”

“If you must, you must. That is the way of things,” the Plain Doll agreed, nodding. “So do not fear. You are, second only to your Lunar Womb and Giver of Gifts, the master of this realm.”

“I’m safe in my dream. If I get shot, or kidnapped out - out there,” Mordin stammered, gesturing up back towards the mansion-upon-the-hill and its gravestone, “I fail you and her, don’t I? What’ll Aenon do, think, feel? My family? Friends? What happens to me?”

“If you know you are safe in your dream, and you know that the dream and the waking world do not exist in isolate, why be afraid?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Because I do not know the answer. I am your caretaker and tutor and nursemaid and watchful servant, but I am not you.”

He sniffed, cleared his throat, wiped at his eyes. “I hate it when you get all cryptic.”

“There is no obfuscation in my words, little one. You alone decide your course of action - and if this world, this plane, where your will is the world, and this plane and the waking one are not one or two but in between - can you, in some way, not be the master of the waking world, too?”

“I can. If that’s true. I can. I could be.” Mordin suppressed a shaking, wavering sob. “I - I think that scares me.”

“It should not.”

“Easy - easy for you to say.”

“Be brave, little one,” the Doll cooed, stroking his head. “Melancholy, turning away from your destiny - that ill befits the Herald of the Moonlit Shepherdess. Go on. Step forward. The symbol is the moon, and you are its messenger, no?” She let go of him, and, slowly, Mordin took a step forward, arm carefully stretching towards the glowing rune. “Good, Mordin Solus. Claim it. Claim your right and your chosen future.”

He did as he was told.

**And he saw.**

 

* * *

 

 

 

 **EYE OF THE WOMB**

 **I**  
_  
An eye within an eye:_

 _One for the Mother, who is barren,_

 _and_

 _One for the Child, who cannot be._

 _The Light is the hope that the fields can be made fallow._

 _The Line is the fear that the fields will be forever salted._

 _\----_

* * *

Mordin opened his eyes, shuddering as the sensation of pulsating, unctuous flesh within his skull sent waves of clarity through his mind.

“You awaken at last, little one.”

Mordin opened his eyes.

He was in an unfamiliar place - a rectangular sepulcher, by his best estimates, dimly lit by soft blue-fire lanterns and decorated with row upon row of grey-stone columns; they terminated in a dusty wooden lectern bearing a rusted silver chalice. Unseen wind disturbed countless dangling discs which hung from the ceiling by thin, golden chains, each rusted-metal plate bearing an Eye of the Womb which looked down at Mordin with a gentle gaze.

“They’re looking at me,” Mordin whispered, eyes drawn slowly upwards to the runes. “They - they see me.”

“Yes.” A quick inspection of his surroundings revealed no entrance to the chambers he was in; the Doll, calm and collected as was always the case, was leaning against one of the columns. “She sees you, little one. Always.”

“I - I felt it. Knew it. Sadness. Pride. Hope. Fear.” Mordin shook his head, eyes never leaving the discs which hung just out of reach. “I guess I just assumed a, I don’t know, eldritch monster, or being, would be beyond those things. But you were right, as usual. She wants.”

“Yes.” The Plain Doll shifted slightly, her clothes rustling as she took silent steps towards him. “A mountaineer who ascends to the peak of a steep mountain no other can climb may achieve greatness, but they do so alone. Power is meaningless without a space in which to share - or exercise - itself.”

Mordin didn’t respond, simply turning to face the Doll, meeting her gaze with ever-steadying calm.

“Did you see aught else, besides the Eyes of the Womb?”

“Nothing concrete,” Mordin managed after a moment. “But I felt the gravity, the weight of her burden. She cares - she really cares. About us, alien as we are to her and vice versa.”

“About you,” the Doll added, laying a cold, warm hand on Mordin’s cheek. “If this is too much to bear, you need not shoulder it alone, or at all.”

“I can’t - I won’t,” Mordin replied. “Maybe I’m just arrogant, or selfish, but it feels good, to have someone put that level of trust in me.”

“Sating your needs is hardly a crime.”

“No. I guess not.” Mordin did his best to smile, and glanced at the chalice. “What’s in it?”

“Truths - more of them, though even I am not privy to its exact contents,” the Doll admitted with a shrug.

Mordin nodded, more to himself than anything. “I’m not ready.”

A small, hand-covered laugh from the Plain Doll sent shivers up his eyes. “Ahh. Your very admission betrays how ready you are, some might say. But I concur - you are not ready, not for this. Can you speak to any other lessons?”

“For a moment,” Mordin said slowly, “I wasn’t here. I was in bed, and in the Dream, and somewhere else; I think I get, if only slightly, what you mean by how the Dream and the waking world aren’t really exclusive. Kind of.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Okay, not at all. I got a feeling, but not much else.”

“Patience, little one. In time. I must ask, though - have your intentions changed, regarding your hunt for the stranger who asked for your service?”

“No. I’m going to look for him; on some level I know it’s not entirely the right thing to do, especially if I look at it from a less, uh, eldritch perspective,” Mordin muttered, “but the blood’s pushing me to act. Instinct. Insightful instinct.” He smiled thinly at the Plain Doll, and made a half-shrug. “Part of me feels like this is all a big test from her.”

“She makes no tests for you, Herald. You face enough challenges as things are - and so her tests, and my tests, are mere extensions of the ones you construct for yourself.” The Plain Doll returned his smile. “You understand.”

“I think so. I’m gonna need out of here, though - I’ve got some reading to do before I wake from the Dream, assuming the study has information on the Dream’s mechanisms,” Mordin mused. “And I want to practice some more blood alchemy, especially know that I know of the Eyes in her Womb.”

“Will you, at last, partake in the facilities left for you? I feared they might crumble into forgotten memory,” the Doll noted with a dry smirk.

“I will. But no promises that I don’t remodel,” Mordin noted.

“Unfortunate, but acceptable.”

“I still need a way out of this, uh, room,” he added. “Not that I don’t get how to shape the Dream, but I’m not sure if this place is important - not to mention I’m not sure where we are.”

“It is not.” The Doll gestured around her, pearl-white arms shining in the blue glow of the fires. “The core of the Dream, the things which give it substance and memory and shape and thickness of being - you cannot harm it, not permanently. Seek your way out; this place will always be here.”

Mordin closed his eyes, feeling his blood throb and roll through his veins with considered focus. Long, soft fingers, cold and invisible - and yet he saw them, pearl-white flesh, in brief, glimpses of the beyond and the true - stroked his brain, cradled his eyes within and without, and he saw.

When Mordin built his addition to the mansion-atop-the-hill, it had been a simple thing; he had conceived of his desires and they had simply faded into the real. This was different - an expansion of his sight and awareness, a deep understanding of himself and his blood and the Dream surrounding him.

He was silent, for a long moment, staring at the wall opposite the lectern with a vacuous gaze for many minutes - until the light returned to his eyes.

He could feel it - patterns of vibration and networks of light, barely visible to the eye, invisible to his perception - but his blood saw them, knew them, understood them.

“Blood,” Mordin murmured, shaking his head. “It always ends up being the blood, doesn’t it?”

“Well done,” the Plain Doll said with audible pride. “And yes - the blood is a weighty thing, my little scholar. It remembers the history and the way of things; it grants sight where your eyes - your outer ones - struggle to grasp truth. Even if you were to remove the eyes you rely on, blindness would never afflict you, not truly.”

Mordin nodded slowly. “Echolocation?”

“Like a bat?”

“Yes, like a - wait. You have bats, where you’re from?” Mordin sputtered.

“Surely, in all the stars and lights which spread across the cosmos, it is not inconceivable that similar animals might exist in two places,” the Plain Doll replied with a smile. “Though, perhaps, your bats are not the same as mine.”

Mordin’s expression grew pensive. “Six wings? White? Vestigial eyes, big fangs?”

“Ah, no. Black. Two wings. No eyes.”

“That’s - nope. Not the same thing. Maybe a little.” Mordin stared back at the empty wall he’d been focusing on, and frowned. “How exactly do you speak to me, anyway? I don’t mean the mechanics of how your thoughts touch mine - I know, the Dream, eldritch knowledge, Her power. I mean - like - translation. Is it intention that you’re hearing from me? I doubt it’s the words I’m thinking in my head.”

“Akin to that, yes. I see you as you are, hear your thoughts and wants as you conceive them.” The Doll shrugged slightly. “Of course, it is not perfect, not always - but nothing can claim to be truly perfect, I suppose. But I have veered from my lesson. The blood sees, and it hears, and it knows, and it remembers. In another time, I would have commanded you to seek the echoes the blood leaves behind in the waking world.”

“Does - does doing that grant me knowledge, or a better understanding of, I don’t know, hidden objects, devices and stuff?”

“Yes.”

“You’re - why would I not want that?” Mordin pressed.

“I - hrm.” The Doll frowned - truly frowned - and Mordin flinched at the sight of what might have passed for honest uncertainty upon the Doll’s sculpted face. “Leave this place, and then we shall discuss the matter over your alchemical practice.”

He blinked, and the Doll was gone.

 _Hit on something sensitive there, huh._

Half-aware, still lost in the uncharacteristic unease the Plain Doll had, for the first time, shown, Mordin absently walked over to the barren wall and placed his hand on it; with idle thought, the flesh upon his palm tore open slightly, and mordin traced the symbol - the Eye of the Womb - with near-perfect accuracy.

Letting his hand fall to his side, the wound upon his hand sealed, and Mordin watched the bright green blood on the wall cease its dripping before flashing white, red - then blue.

 _Thank you, Moonlit Shepherdess. For the knowledge. And for what it’s worth, you have my sympathy_ , Mordin thought as the wall parted to reveal a moonlit stairwell leading up and out into the Dream’s fields; he took a step-

 

-and fell to his knees, then to his stomach, cradling his head as a weight, heavy, but not painful, a warmth, but not burning, a feeling of love and knowing and want and desire and happiness became his entire being-

 

 

 **A RETURNING OF GRATITUDE. AN ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SYMPATHY. THANKS GIVEN FOR BEING.**

  
-Mordin heaved, crawling up the stairs, eyes wide, until he managed to make it to the top of the stairs, exiting into the graveyard. He rolled onto his back, tears streaming down his face as he smiled at the moon above him.

“You’re welcome,” Mordin croaked, before his mind fell into soothing void.

He awoke once more, this time in a place of warmth, surrounded by wood, velvet furniture, and a crackling fire just out of sight; he was laying on something soft, head cradled in hard, cold-warm hands.

“Little one. Oh, brave messenger. She spoke to you, and at last you heard her, if only for the briefest of moments.”

He opened his eyes to find the Plain Doll gazing down at him; she was lounging on the carpeted floor of the mansion’s study, cradling his head in her lap.

“You moved me in here?” Mordin asked quietly.

“Yes. This place may not have cold and warmth and diseases, not truly - but I felt it a kind gesture to move you nonetheless. In any case, you are light, by my standards,” the Doll pointed out with a smile. “Was your conversation enlightening? Fruitful?”

“I - I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything - just - I just felt, well, nice.”

Nothing but the crackling of fire, for a moment.

“Same feeling I get when Aenon does something nice. Like - love. From a parent.”

The Doll stroked his head, smiled, nodded. “Yes, little one. Never forget. She does love you. She loves you so much.”

“Heh. More of a mother on a day-to-day basis than the clan’s matriarch,” Mordin sighed, closing his eyes. “Do you find it strange?”

“Do you love your birth mother?”

“Yes.”

“And what has she given you? Besides your birth?”

“Standing? Money? Support?” Mordin shrugged slightly. “Clan politics is her thing. I serve her, in return - but we, or at least I, don’t hear much from her.”

“Hrm.”

“You disapprove?”

“Forgive me.” The Doll looked away, an odd expression Mordin couldn’t place taking over her features.

“Heh. First time I’ve seen you so uncomfortable. Two in a day, too. That’s a record,” Mordin said softly. “Will you tell me about the echoes?”

“So many revelations in a single day. Do you fear them?”

“A little,” Mordin admitted, turning in to face the Doll’s stomach. “But you were right. Not much place for fear as the messenger of a cosmic god, right?”

“Better,” the Doll answered, cradling his head once more. “I told you once that the blood of others could make you strong.”

“As far as things go, I’m not that weirded out by the idea,” Mordin pointed out. “Not anymore.”

“Fair enough.” The Doll paused, hummed for a moment. “There is a hierarchy of power to the blood; that which is plain, and that which is thick. Thick blood, strong, heady and intoxicating like yours, grants great power. Through me - and perhaps, in time, through your own ministrations - the taking of even small amounts of thick blood can strengthen you far beyond the limits of mortality and reason, albeit in very specific ways.”

“Specific? How so?”

“Thick blood remembers, little one. You face limitations on its applications.”

“You’re being vague, again,” Mordin sighed. “I know. In time.”

“In time.”

“So? Blood that doesn’t have the eldritch touch? What about that?” Mordin asked. “Let me guess - weak, but flexible in its uses?”

“Correct,” the Doll affirmed, patting Mordin’s head. “So smart. Yes. The echoes of thin blood are weak, if they exist at all; you will need a vast quantity of it in order to affect tangible changes within yourself. But it is, as you note, more easily applicable, and more importantly serves as a disposable fuel for blood rites.”

“Huh. Okay, that’s not really hard to grasp,” Mordin noted, rolling onto his back as the Doll eased him up into a sitting position. “Why were you afraid of this, exactly?”

“I did not know if you wished to be a hunter of beasts, or men, especially so soon after expressing your fears.”

“Going into the STG at some point,” Mordin said. “I’ll be killing people at some point in my life. Might as well make some good out of it. Besides, I’m not, you know, killing people to bulk up for this whole investigation of mine.”

“Of course.” The Plain Doll got to her feet and smoothed out her clothes, nodding. “But you do intend to partake in blood alchemy?”

“Yeah,” Mordin replied, sighing as he too got up. “And I want to see if I can’t work on some tools of my own in here.”

“You will build weapons of your own conception,” the Doll said.

“That’s the idea, anyway.”

“Will you continue to spurn the knowledge granted to you by the mansion?”

“Not all of it, though if you’re asking me to carry around one of your insane contraptions that’s probably not happening quite yet.” Mordin shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve totally avoided everything in here - most of all, I’m interested to see what things I can take in and out of the Dream. Far as I was able to tell, there’s not really a rule besides the fact that I have to be able to carry it.”

“Not even I know the limits of this place,” the Doll pointed out, “and my experiences have been with those who have made use of the Dream, not been its master. Still, I would caution against you trying to bring, say, one of your vehicles in with you.”

“I don’t even own a car,” Mordin scoffed.

“It was merely an example.”

“Just teasing you.”

The Doll looked at him, blinked, tilted her head.

“Don’t be like that,” Mordin sighed as he turned to examine the study’s enormous bookshelves. “Well, I guess I’ve got my work cut out for me, don’t I.”

 

* * *

 

 

  
**Talat, Sur’Kesh  
22nd of Sun  
2659 Galactic Standard**

 

“Hey, kid. How’re you feeling today?”

“Morning, uncle.” Mordin rubbed at his eyes as Aenon depolarized his bedroom’s windows, yawning as he stretched. “I’m doing alright.”

Aenon turned to him, a small, worried smile on his face. “Glad to hear it, Mordin.”

Mordin got up, punched his uncle in the arm lightly and walked over to the window, staring out at the city below. “Don’t you ever get days when you just want to lay around at home? Do nothing but sleep?”

“No, because if I sleep more than four hours a day I get all, you know, gross,” Aenon replied, joining his nephew. “It’s called oversleeping.”

“No such thing.”

“Try telling that to the rest of the world, kid. Might be a hard sell,” Aenon chuckled. “Still - honestly, you alright? You’d been doing so well for so long, I just, you know, figured that was the end of your whole super-sleepy phase. Whole day of you just snoring away there worried me a bit.”

“Well, I’m feeling good now, so that’s fine, right?”

“I guess. Still, if this happens again, I want you to head down to the clinic.” Aenon paused, staring out the window. “Just in case. I know it’s probably nothing, but why risk it?”

“I know, I know. I’ll make sure to take care of myself.”

Aenon smiled, patting Mordin on the shoulder. “Anything in particular that might have set you off? I know you’ve been running around checking out schools and jobs and stuff. Figured that might have tired you out.”

“Yeah, just the usual stuff, uncle. I’m not stressed, not really, about making it through university or finding a job or anything,” Mordin noted, “but some part of me still worries. It’s a critical time, right? Decisions now could impact my future in big ways.”

Aenon snorted a laugh and shrugged. “Where’d you hear that? Sounds like some cornball self-help motto to me. Honestly, though, I’m telling you - don’t worry. Life’s too short to worry about screwing up - as long as you try your best and treat people the way you’d want to be treated, life has a way of turning out alright.”

“And when the dice rolls against you?”

“Then at least you can say you put in the effort, and you didn’t screw anyone else over on your way through, eh?”

Mordin sighed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Not like you to be so down about this stuff, kid,” Aenon muttered. “You sure you’re alright? If you need to talk, I’m always here.”

Mordin shrugged. “I know, Aenon. I know. I promise - just having a bad morning, maybe.”

“Some breakfast might help, eh?”

“I’m actually supposed to be meeting a bunch of the guys in a hour or so,” Mordin replied. “But, ah, I wouldn’t be opposed to a bit of breakfast, if you’re offering.”

“Can’t turn down a free meal, eh?”

“Nope.”

“Well, alright - I’ll probably make something light, then,” Aenon said, rubbing at his chin. “Anything in particular you want?”

“Do we have stuff for falva?”

"Falva. That's - that's like, the least light think I can think of." Aenon blinked several times, scowling. “And since when is falva breakfast food?”

“Anything’s breakfast food if you eat it in the morning,” Mordin replied with a shrug. “Falva included.”

“That’s garbage. You don’t eat cake rolls for breakfast and then say that it’s not dessert,” Aenon argued.

“Except I’ve done that before. Breakfast cake. It can be both.”

“Dumbest argument I’ve ever heard in my life,” Aenon muttered. “Still, whatever, kid. You want fried, greasy, fatty meat for breakfast instead of my galaxy-famous biscuits, that’s your loss. I’m still making some for myself.”

“Love you too, uncle,” Mordin said as Aenon left his bedroom, stifling a laugh.

His expression sobered after the door closed.

_Well that seemed to have worked. Sometimes I worry about how naturally lying to Aenon comes to me._

_Subterfuge is a skill like any other, and you have been practicing for many years now - family or otherwise. Surely, the ability to lie to a loved one speaks well to a future in spycraft?_

_I guess. Thanks, Plain Doll._

_Of course. You are welcome._

After washing up, Mordin did one final check through the backpack he’d packed the night before, rifling through its pouches twice to make sure everything in his checklist was prepped and ready. Satisfied, he locked its latches and opened his bedroom door, walking straight into a heady, thick scent heavy with grease and oils.

“Smells good,” Mordin shouted over the din of the tiny kitchens high-powered ventilators and Aenon’s homemade deep-fryer, which occupied an entire corner of the cooking range.

“Flattery’s not going to change my mind, kid,” Aenon shouted back as he carefully pulled a meat-laden fryer basket out of its metal casing. “Smells good, sure. Smells like breakfast? No way.” Firing a smirk at Mordin, Aenon laid the fried falva out on a cooling rack before replacing the basket and checking the oven built into the bottom of the range. “Could you set the table while I get everything else sorted out?”

“Sure thing.”

A few minutes later, uncle and nephew were seated together, a small spread of jam-laden biscuits on Aenon’s plate and a mountain of meat on Mordin’s; they dug in with gusto, barely exchanging words until no food remained at the table.

“Sweet hells, kid, you tore through that like it was nothing,” Aenon said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Since when do you eat that fast?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” Mordin said, scratching at his chin. “Can’t a man be hungry?”

Aenon sighed. “Sure, I guess. Just don’t expect to keep eating like that past university, Mordin, or you’ll be dead in a week. Heart failure? That’s a bad way to go - you remember granduncle Yaekol?”

“No, I was barely one when he died, right? And besides, how’d he not notice or take care of it before, you know, dying, anyway?” Mordin asked, frowning. “Heart failure’s not that hard to solve. Takes a day or two in the hospital, tops.”

“He was out at some fancy resort on Illium. Wasn’t just the food - poor bastard was on so many substances I’m honestly surprised he hadn’t died earlier,” Aenon explained. “I mean, to be fair, Yaekol was, like, forty-five, anyhow. At that point I don’t even think he really cared.”

“So he decided to go out on a drug-fueled binge-eating shitstorm.”

“I mean he didn’t actually shit himself to death, so that’s a plus, I guess,” Aenon pointed out.

Mordin held back his laughter for only a moment. “That’s got to be the lowest bar anyone’s ever set. Didn’t die in a pooping accident, congrats.”

“Worse ways to go, kid. At least that way people remember you.”

“I’d take dying in a Tuchankan gutter over being remembered as ‘that guy who pooped himself to death,’ for sure.”

“Gods, that’s got dark all of a sudden,” Aenon chortled. “What’ve you been reading?”

“Comics?”

“Hah! Nerd.”

“They’re your comics.”

“Never said I wasn’t one too. Ahh, man, I’m so glad I didn’t sell that st - hey, don’t you have to be going soon?”

“Yeah, yeah, probably. Be fine if I’m a few minutes late, Aenon,” Mordin replied.

“Shouldn’t make a habit of keeping your friends waiting, though,” Aenon pointed out.

“I know, I know. Thanks for breakfast, uncle,” Mordin said as he got up and emptied his falva bones into the kitchen’s compost chute; he tucked his plate into the dishwasher and grinned. “That was good, real good.”

“Damn straight. Maybe I can retire, be a cook or something,” Aenon sighed. “Be a lot more fun than working on renegotiating inter-colony dairy trade, again, for the sixth time this year.”

“Really selling that government job,” Mordin snorted as he returned to his room. Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes for a moment, he then grabbed his backpack, walked over to the door and slid into his boots. “Anyways, I’ll be out for most of the day unless we get bored or something.”

Aenon nodded and smiled. “Alright, no problem - I might have a few friends over later today anyways, so just shoot me a message if you’ll be home for dinner, alright?”

“Will do,” Mordin replied, waving as he left the apartment. “See you around!”

His expression grew flat and determined as he left the apartment and made his way to the rail station not far from his complex; from the downtown core of Talat, by his calculations, it would take almost an hour to reach the Rakana bluffs. Finding himself a corner seat in the rear of the train, Mordin continued reviewing the municipal blueprints of the mansion he’d be investigating; he’d spent longer than he knew the day before in a reconstruction of the building thrown together in the Dream. Despite knowing the building’s layout inside and out, the very act of review was calming in its repetition.

By the time the train pulled into the Rakana Bluffs station, his nerves were calm - as calm as they’d be, anyhow, and he strode out into the opulent suburb with a quiet, controlled confidence. The mansion in question was a ten minute walk away from the station, and Mordin did his best to simply walk, as though he’d always lived in the neighbourhood, until the mansion in question - a large, Naerian-period antique roofed with bronze and surrounded by a well-maintained garden - appeared in his sight. Giving the building no more than a glance, he continued walking by, stopping only to pull a small microdrone out of his coat and letting it drop freely onto the pavement.

Continuing onwards, Mordin walked for another three blocks before making a right, stopping at a small, lavishly-decorated cafe; he paid for a disgustingly overpriced cup of tea before taking a seat by the window, activated his omnitool and connected to his microdrone. Careful to avoid flying near any of the windows or cameras he’d spotted on his walk by, he sent the craft in a lazy loop around the property, marking out differences between the blueprints he’d obtained and the reality of the situation.

_Odd. No extra cameras or sensors that I can see, and there’s no sign that anyone’s home. Hrm._

Flicking through his omnitool controls, Mordin tapped a button and watched as his microdrone spat out a few pebbles at one of the windows; they bounced off without setting off any alarms or drawing any attention from possible occupants.

_Thought someone would be home. Weekend, lunch hour. Hrm. Maybe - maybe._

He piloted the drone around to the other side of the property and peppered a few of the windows with more rocks, stopping only to grab more ammunition from the gravel around the property.

_Still no alarms. Nothing. At all. Alright, let’s see if we can’t sneak a little closer._

Taking a few sips of his tea, Mordin carefully maneuvered the microdrone into the mansion’s chimney, then descended into an unlit, ashen fireplace.

_Deep breaths. Cool. Cool. Stay cool._

Ascending up to hug the ceiling of the mansion, Mordin slowly and carefully sent the drone through the building; the house was filled with enough antique furniture and decorations to fill a museum, and there were certainly signs of occupants ranging from opened magazines to unwashed dishes in the kitchen - but there were no signs of life anywhere, on any of the three floors of the building, let alone evidence of anything out of the ordinary.

Mordin was about to second-guess himself regarding the address when, during his second fly-through of the basement, something tugged at his attention.

_What._

Mordin paused, squinted at his omnitool, and stared.

It was a bookshelf, laden with old, dusty tomes - but something tore at his mind, ate away at his skull, his eyes, his eyes, his eyes, his-

-something was clearly off.

_No time to waste._

Mordin got up, finished his tea and made his way back to the mansion at a brisk walk with his hood up; once he arrived, he checked his surroundings from the house next door before quickly taking a balaclava out of his backpack, throwing it on, and slinking around to the back of the mansion while carefully slipping through the blind spots of the exterior cameras. Deactivating his microdrone, Mordin found the small municipal electrical box hidden beneath one of the property’s hedges, pried off the front case and held his hand next to its sensors.

_Hope this works, or I’m screwed - and I’ll have spent three months of stock profits on nothing._

Loading a quarian-made black market script onto his omnitool, Mordin connected to the box’s controls and disabled power supply to the mansion. Wasting no time, he sprinted over to the mansion’s back door, scanned the physical lock with his omnitool, flashed-forged a key and unlocked the latch. Drawing a small stunner from his pack, he made his way through the house, ran down the stairs and stopped in front of the bookshelf-

-the bookshelf-

-the bookshelf-

-the book shelf, shelf-

_-I see it, I see it, I smell it, I smell it, I hear it, I hear it-_

_So smart. So well done. Yes. Trust the blood and the eyes and the scent, little one._

Mordin reached out to the bookshelf - and paused.

_No. No, no, no, no. No. I - I know something is up. I have - I have to pull books. But - I can’t - there are too many options. Okay. Breathe, Mordin. Breathe. Plan B._

He grabbed his backpack and pulled out a small paper stencil bearing a rune: the Eye of the Womb. Next came a small vial of his thick, rich, heady, intoxicating-

_-focus, focus, focus-_

-blood held in a tiny vial; he popped the lid open, stuck the stencil onto the bookshelf and splashed the blood onto the stencil. He reached for the sensation, the closing gasp between his skull and the stencil, felt the space between paper and stencil and bookshelf and blood shrink, shrink, tinier and tinier, until there was no space, no difference.

Mordin was the blood and the paper and the books and the skull and the mind and the brain and the eyes of the womb and the Eyes in Her Womb and Her Eyes and Her Womb, motherly needs and wants and love, like the maternal mind which knows Her children, perfect, unending-

-slack-jawed, gaze unfocused, his eyes twitching, rolling in every direction, his Eyes WIthin unblinking and staring-

_-six books, here, here, here, here, pause, here, pause, here-_

And he snapped into focus as the stencil and his blood disintegrated into nothing.

The bookshelf slid backwards, then out of view into the ground; behind it, another hatch unsealed, revealing-

_-RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN-_

-Mordin twitched, fell to the ground and rolled to the side as a an omni-bolt tore through the space where he was standing mere moments ago; he raised his stunner and fired based on instinct. It impacted something fleshy, and a salarian cried out - but Mordin was already up and running up the stairs and-

_-OH SHIT-_

-a burly figure appeared at the top of the stairs, jumping down into a kick which slammed into his chest, sending him flying into the ground face-first. He struggled, screamed with fury, ready to draw on it, his blood, his Heraldry, his right, his-

“Gods above. You’ve got a real quad on you, don’t you, kid?”

It was a woman’s voice - calm, deep, filled with both surprise and pure, undiluted approval; he struggled, fought against the weight holding him down, but was rewarded with a quick shove back into the carpet.

“Ease off, Tidal - don’t look at me like that. He’s fine. He’s not going to try anything. Will you, Mordin?”

Mordin said nothing.

“Look, kid, I’m not going to do anything to you, as long as you just stay cool. Now - are you going to try anything?”

“No,” Mordin ground out.

“Good. Let him up, please.”

The weight on his back shifted slightly before moving aside; Mordin got up, slowly, arms raised; he was halfway to standing when someone tore his balaclava off, and he blinked.

He was surrounded by a loose semicircle of black-masked salarians, all of them aiming handguns at him; six were behind him as well  _\- his eyes, his eyes, his eyes within, he saw them, wearing the same masks with their handguns pointed squarely at his hea_ d.

Standing directly in front of him was a salarian woman - of all things - face marked with scars and burns and clad in a simple set of white robe. A wide, unedning, toothy grin sat upon her face, and she regarded Mordin with piercing eyes. “Wave, go check on Beach - make sure that stunner didn’t mess with him too badly,” the woman ordered.

Mordin heard shuffling and saw with his Eyes as one of the guards behind him peeled off to check on the space behind where the bookshelf had been.

“Ma’am,” the man barked, “he’s fine - unconscious, but breathing. Should I wake him up?”

The woman snorted. “Don’t bother. Idiot gets himself stunned like that, that’s his fault. Mordin here’s the real center of the party, hmm?” She nodded at Mordin and leaned in close, until her face almost touching his. “Look. At. You. My goodness. You’re a real go-getter.”

Mordin said nothing.

She leaned away, sighed. “Look, kid - I’m not here to kill you, or whatever. You can call me Igin. Mordin, Igin - now we’re friends. Okay?”

“Fine,” Mordin muttered. “What do you want with me?”

Igin laughed, and pat Mordin on the shoulder. “I’m not the one breaking into other people's’ houses, kid. Anyways, I’m here to offer you a job.”

Mordin blinked.

“You deaf?” Igin asked.

“No, just...surprised,” Mordin managed, looking at the woman and her guards. “Job? What - I don’t get it.”

Igin smiled. “Daetan Naeyori ring any bells?”

“What.”

“So you’ve not only hard of hearing, you’ve also got memory loss.”

“No, I - I’m sorry, this was, what, like, a test?” Mordin snorted. “Sorry, that doesn’t seem likely to me.”

“So you’re stupid, too. Fantastic.”

Mordin stared.

“Look,” Igin continued, “I’m not going to lie. I’m genuinely impressed, kid - I think you’ve got a lot of potential. Your instincts, in particular, are downright insane - I gave you two weeks, and you found this place in three days. Then you infiltrate the building without setting off any alarms or getting spotted by any of the cameras, found the switch-shelf, then used some sort of disposable fingerprinting device, and opened the hatch, managing to subdue one of my boys while dodging a damn omnibolt.” Igin whistled slightly, and nodded, seemingly to herself. “I’d expect that out of an STG operative, not some kid fresh out of secondary and with a medical record that’d make most med-school grads shit themselves dry.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, stop with the whole tough-guy act, alright? Mordin, I know you better than you think,” Igin sighed. “I’ve changed your diapers, by the gods.”

“Who are you?” Mordin stammered, expression descending into utter confusion.

“Igin Solus, at your service,” the woman said with a wide bow.

Mordin's jaw fell.

“What."

 

 

 

  
“Good gods, the whole ‘confused teenager’ thing is getting really old,” Igin continued. “No love your birth-mother? I thought you’d-”

“-birth mother? Igin Solus died twenty years before I was hatched,” Mordin said slowly. “Car accident. Eighteen people dead, six injured. Gajai took your place in the family line and ended up being my mother.”

“Oho, look at you. Fancy yourself a follower of clan politics, eh?” Igin shrugged. “Well, you know what they say, Mordin - you can’t believe everything you see.”

“So you, what, faked your death?” Mordin stared at Igin without comprehension. “Why?”

“Didn’t fake my death, Mordin,” Igin replied, pointing at the burns on her face. “You think I planned on these?”

“Cosmetic surgery. Hear it’s good these days. Should try it,” Mordin replied flatly.

Igin’s ensuing smile was an ugly one. “I don’t bother. Not in my line of work.”

“And that is?”

“Special Tasks Group," Igin answered proudly. "Wetwork, in particular."

Mordin grunted. “Do STG operatives make a habit of telling others about their secret jobs?”

“Not usually,” Igin answered with a shrug, “but since I’m bringing you into the fold, I figure there’s no harm.”

“I haven’t accepted anything,” Mordin replied.

“Oh, please. Let’s just drop that. We both know you want in - me and my men have watched you all but beg your granduncle for a desk job,” Igin scoffed, “and, what, now you tell me you’ll turn down a chance at fieldwork?”

Mordin opened his mouth, but could think of nothing smart.

“That’s what I thought,” Igin said, grinning. “Come on. We’re going back to tell your uncle the good news. Group one, with me - we’re heading out. Group two, perimeter check and reinstall the security suite. Oh, and someone wake Beach up at some point, let him know he got knocked out by a ten year old with a stunner. Rub it in.”

“Ma’am.”

Two of the black-masked men grabbed Mordin roughly by the arms and escorted him up the stairs behind Igin, bringing him up and out into the backyard where an aircar was already waiting; he was shoved in to the back, and once Igin and her escort were onboard the vehicle took off.

“So. You’re my mother, huh?” Mordin broke the silence with a question, staring at Igin, who was sitting across from him in the rear compartment.

“Technically. But I didn’t do anything besides provide the eggs, so birth-mother’s a better fit if you ask me,” Igin noted with a shrug. “Aenon did all the work. Well, Mohip, but then he went and got himself killed.”

“Killed? My dad died...in...a...oh. Oh, wonderful. You’re going to tell me he was STG, too, aren’t you,” Mordin mumbled in disbelief.

“You catch on quick. Good boy,” Igin said, nodding. “Anything else?”

“Maesat’s STG. You’re STG. My dad was STG. What, are you going to say Aenon’s a spy, too?”

“Ding ding ding, we have a winner,” Igin chuckled. “It’s never even occurred to you? That maybe our family line has its own little business? It’s own bubble?”

“No.”

“Gotta be more observant, Mordin,” Igin chided. “Out there, that can mean life or death. Though, to be fair, I’m sure Aenon’s done his best to hide this from you, the misguided bastard. Spycraft is the Solus business, and the business is good, kid. When shit needs to be fixed, it’s our family that’s first to be chosen. Think about that.”

Mordin said nothing.

 _How - she’s not lying. She’s not lying. She isn’t. How did - how? How did I not notice any of this?_

 _Your uncle shielded you, perhaps?_

 _Why?_

 _Love, I would imagine._

 _But - did he - I don’t understand._

 _You mean much to him._

 _I know, but - but still._

The rest of the ride passed in silence; they arrived not long after at his apartment complex. The driver parked the vehicle on the roof, and the black-masked guards silently slid out of the car first, forming a circle around both the car and Igin; with her safety secured, only then did one of the guards gesture for Mordin to follow. They entered the building, and spent what felt like hours walking down six flights of stairs.

Igin waved her omnitool over the door to Mordin’s home, and it unlocked; two guards pulled Mordin away from the door, while another four entered with Igin.

Aenon was sitting at the kitchen table, a poorly-hidden scowl on his face.

“Igin.”

“Oh, come on, that’s no way to talk to an old friend,” Igin replied happily. “How’ve you been, Igin? Haven’t seen you in years. See? Was that so hard?”

“I’m not giving you Mordin, and that’s final. Now get out.”

“Gods above, you’re a real piece of shit, you know that? A woman’s in your house. You’re supposed to have the carpets out, the tea and wines ready, and a meal in the oven,” Igin said, laughing. “Oh, the look on your face, y-”

“-if you’re not going to leave, then get to the point,” Aenon snapped.

“You know I’m here for Mordin. He’s coming into the fold, whether you like it or not, Aenon,” Igin replied, all traces of cheer dropping; her deep, ironclad tone sounded like being held at knifepoint.

Aenon made a hissing sound. “Close the damn door.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“Close the fucking door, now.”

“Mordin can do it. Can’t you, Mordin?”

He felt himself being shoved into his own house.

“Mord - Mordin?” Aenon got to his feet, eyes wide, pleading, his head and his hands shaking. “Mordin, I - I didn’t-”

“-I’m sorry, uncle Aenon,” Mordin sputtered, “I’m so-”

“-oh, gods, let’s save the waterworks for later, alright?” Igin sighed. “Shut the door, jammers up.”

Her guards complied, locking the door behind them as they entered and drawing portable jammers from their coats.

“So. Now that we’re all up to speed, let’s just get to the point - Mordin, naughty boy that he is, passed my little test with flying colours. Why, he even knocked one of my boys out with a stunner. Anyways, he’s perfect STG material - like I knew he would be - so he’s going to accept my offer,” Igin explained in a matter-of-fact tone. “You, Aenon, are going to be okay with this.”

“You keep Mordin out of this,” Aenon growled. “Just - just leave him be, and go.”

“Or what? You’re a real hypocrite, you know, telling him he can’t join the Intelligence Services while being an STG plant yourself,” Igin scoffed.

“What?” Mordin’s mouth dropped, and he blinked at Aenon’s angry-worried-angry face. “You’re - you work for the STG?”

Aenon’s face dropped. “I’m sorry, Mordin, I couldn’t tell you-”

“That’s a load of shit. You could have told him. You didn’t want to tell him, because little uncle Aenon was so worried about his frail little boy,” Igin mocked, “wasn’t he?”

“I don’t want him living your life, my life, his father’s life,” Aenon protested. “He - he suffered so much already - can’t we just leave him be? Let him have a normal life? Even just for a little while?”

“Why? He’s ready, you crybaby,” Igin snorted. “Solus men have joined the IS and the STG at half Mordin’s age, and lived to be just fine. Hells, look at Mohip-”

“-you leave Mohip out of this-”

“-out there fighting the good fight at the age of six-”

“-you shut the fuck up right now, Igin, or I swear I’m going to-”

“-and killing for the Union like a good, proud soldier-”

“-I’m warning you-”

“-dying in the line of duty-”

Aenon got to his feet, managing half a step before the men in black restrained him, pinning him to the wall as the guards on Igin’s side of the table drew their guns.

“You listen to me, Aenon,” Igin hissed. “You have no power over this. So accept the reality of how things work, and sit. Down. Now. Clear?”

“You don’t get to walk in here and drop Mohip’s name like it matters to you, like you give one flying fuck about him or what he wanted,” Aenon shouted. “Don’t you fucking dare! Mohip wanted Mordin safe! Sound! Out of, of, of this, this shit our family does, Igin, do you understand? And then proved it! He died three weeks after telling me that. And you walk in here? Tell me Mohip would do anything less than die to protect his son?”

Igin groaned, throwing her hands up. “Come on, let’s not turn this into a drama. Mohip being all emotional about-”

“-MORDIN IS HIS SON, YOU BITCH,” Aenon roared. “Just because YOU see everyone in this damn line as a pawn or a tool that does NOT mean you can walk in here and toy with their lives, with Mordin’s life. His future! HIS! Not yours, HIS! Mohip loved him, I love him, his family loves him. Do you? Well? DO YOU?"

“Wah wah wah,” Igin sang. “Well clearly you’re all frustrated about this. How about we ask Mordin, huh? Mordin, my boy, how do you feel about joining the STG?”

Mordin stared. Back and forth. Igin, Aenon.

“I’m waiting, kid,” Igin sighed. “Hurry it up.”

“I - I - I’m joining the STG, uncle, but not like this,” Mordin managed, his tone wavering only slightly. “I didn’t know. Not about you or dad or Igin - but I’m joining the IS on my own terms. Not because you want it, Igin. I’m making my own decisions.”

“You’re turning me down,” Igin said, voice dropping even lower. “Is that how I understand it?”

Aenon’s face twisted through a thousand emotions; he opened, closed, opened his mouth.

“Yes. Yes, I am,” Mordin continued, conviction gathering and tone sharpening. “Yeah. Testing me? Fine. Telling me these, the truth of things? Great. But since we’ve met you’ve been insulting me - and treating Aenon like shit. So, you know what, yes. I am turning you down.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Naughty boy,” Igin chided, her tone utterly devoid of emotion. “Be a good son, and listen to your mother.”

“You said it yourself. Birth-mother, not my mom,” Mordin countered. “How’d you put it? Something about just providing the egg? Mother of the century right there."

The room was silent.

“Mordin,” Igin replied, leaning across the table. “Now, let me be clear - you turn me down, and I won’t kill you, or your uncle. I’ll be nice. I won’t even ruin your lives, not yet. But you understand, I hope, that turning me down is cutting yourself off from a very, very, very useful contact who is very highly placed in the IS hierarchy. In the government. In politics. In everything. You understand, right? What it means to say no to me?"

Mordin smiled thinly. “Yeah. I get it. Perfectly."

More silence.

Igin shrugged. “Suit yourself. Both of you - spineless cowards. Come on,” she hissed, getting to her feet. “We’re leaving. Oh, and Mordin?”

“What?”

“Good luck,” Igin ground out. “You’re going to need it, you little shit.”

Igin and her men stormed out of the apartment, leaving Aenon and Mordin together, in silence.

Mordin walked over to Aenon and held him tight.

He didn't let go for a long time.

 

 


	3. V2-B1: Youthful Service / Induction

  
**VOLUME TWO: YOUTHFUL SERVICE  
BOOK ONE: INDUCTION**

**Talat, Sur’Kesh  
31st of Shadow  
2660 Galactic Standard**

 

Aenon looked up from his omnitool, a weak smile on his face. “They’re here, Mordin. Try not to be too hard on her, alright?”

“I’m not going to be difficult about this,” Mordin replied, shrugging. “Honestly. I appreciate her even bothering to see me - I know she’d probably have told me the truth if she could have.”

“Mmm. Agreed. She’s...tough, but not vindictive. Still, she’s probably going to try and talk you out of joining the IS, though,” Aenon pointed out. “Probably.” Mordin shot him a look, and Aenon sighed. “Okay, I’m not going to lie - when Gajai called this morning I was as surprised as you were. I’ve got no clue what this is about.”

Mordin stared at the apartment’s door, frowning. “Just wanted to swing by? Tell me congrats on making it out of Basic Intensive?”

Aenon snorted. “Uh-huh. Since when does Gajai interact with, well, anyone, in a casual manner? With her’s it’s always, you know, ‘fate of the family line’ or ‘duty to the union.’ Not that she’s ever wrong, mind you.”

“Igin’s threatened to nuke the planet if I actually join up with the IS?”

“Don’t jinx us,” Aenon said, his tone sobering. “Last time the clan got a, uh, stern talking to? From the government? That was because somebody - and I’m not saying who - dropped enough nuclear ordnance on some pirate stronghold out in the Terminus to take out a neighbouring moon.”

Mordin blinked. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Aenon shrugged. “To be fair, Sur’Kesh is a far cry from wild space, but still. The woman in question has a worrisome amount of love for taking things too far.”

“And,” came a new, delicate voice as the apartment door hissed open, “if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s Igin Solus taking far too much glee in her mad plots and schemes.”

“Imik-Dalatrass Gajai,” Aenon and Mordin said in unison, rising with bowed heads to greet the Solus clan’s matriarch; the aged woman, dressed in plain grey robes, smiled and clasped her hands together in return.

“That is enough from you, Aenon - flattery gets you nowhere these days,” Gajai replied, waving her hands at him. “And you, Mordin - well, you of all people can be excused for failing to show me the proper respect.”

Mordin looked up. “I - what?”

Taking her seat across Aenon and Mordin - and waiting for her small retinue of red-suited guards to take up defensive positions both in and outside the apartment - Gajai sighed and shook her head.

“When was the last time we spoke, Mordin?”

“One year, one month and nine days,” Mordin replied carefully. “At my secondary graduation. You said that ‘you were proud to see a frail boy grow into a sharp young man,’ Dalatrass.”

“Indeed, I did. And,” Gajai continued, “I also recall asking you if you wished to ask me anything. You declined.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose that such caution might be seen as admirable, depending on the circle you inhabit.” Gajai gazed at Mordin with a warm, genuine smile. “There’s no need to tread lightly around me. Allow me to apologize for lying to you with respect to your birth - though if you do not accept it, I would not hold it against you.”

“It’s fine,” Mordin replied, exhaling visibly. “Igin didn’t seem like the sort of person who lets her plans go awry. Not without complications.”

“Ha! Again, you speak with a light touch,” Gajai snorted as she slapped at the table. “Igin is, as you’ve heard, the sort to deploy a nuclear cleansing when a conventional bomb would work just fine. I despise her. Your uncle despises her. Most of the clan despises her, really.”

Aenon cleared his throat. “Should we - should you - be talking like that?”

“Oh, come off it. I’m too important to replace this late in the game, and Igin knows it,” Gajai answered, shrugging. “I don’t toe the line, and in return she doesn’t care about the fact that I would rather eat my own vomit than speak well of her in private.” Turning her attention back to Mordin, Gajai scowled. “You listen well, Mordin - it was a brave thing you did, and I applaud you for standing up to that dried-up turd of a woman. But you must understand that by being one of the first to openly oppose her in at least a decade or two, you’ve put yourself at the top of her shit-list.”

“She did say she wouldn’t ruin my life, or Aenon’s,” Mordin pointed out with a wry smile. “Not yet.”

“And there’s your problem,” Gajai noted. “Igin is thirty-eight, Mordin. At best, she has, what, seven, eight years left? For a woman of her power, it would be easy to destroy your future, your life, your reputation, within a single year - and knowing her, I would be surprised if she hasn’t concocted some elaborate scheme to ruin you a decade from now just to rub it in from beyond the grave.”

“I’ll do just fine,” Mordin replied simply. “I know myself and my limits - I can deal with a lot more than she thinks. I’m more worried about you, Aenon.”

Aenon snorted. “Really, kid? Look, I’m getting old, too. If I ended up homeless and unable to associate with the Solus clan, I’ve got plenty of places I can ride out the last decade or so of my life in relative comfort. You’re just starting your own career.”

“Let us say, then, that the worst comes to pass,” Gajai added, staring into Mordin’s eyes. “You are made homeless. Stripped of all merits you have earned. Cut off from any and all profits and savings you have accrued until this time. No reputable bank on Sur’Kesh - or the Citadel - will deal with you, at least for the next decade, or perhaps longer. Would you, truly, be able to survive, let alone flourish?”

_Heh. If only I could be honest._

_Shush, little one. No good comes from lording your power over others._

_I’m not lording anything. Right now, though? Their perception and the reality is a little different. Can’t fault me for finding that humourous._

_I suppose you are correct. And I meant no offense._

_None taken._

Mordin stared back with supreme confidence. “Yes. I’d be just fine.”

“You tell the truth,” Gajai muttered, frowning. “Not only are you hard to read, but you are sure of yourself. Truly. You believe yourself - your character - without question.”

 

“Aenon made for a good father, and being told that you might die at any moment growing up tends to humble you,” Mordin replied, shrugging.

“Fair enough. You know, some of your cousins still believe you to be, at best, a perfectly average salarian - and a poor Solus, mind you,” Gajai replied, nodding. “Very well. If you trust yourself, then I am in no position to stop you - from joining the Intelligence Service, or the Special Tasks Group, or even simply pursuing a normal life within the boundaries of Igin’s influence.”

Mordin bowed slightly. “Thank you for your trust in me, Dalatrass.”

“It wasn’t necessarily a compliment,” Gajai continued, tone darkening. “Not entirely. Listen to me, and listen well, Mordin. Self-confidence, conviction in one’s own beliefs, those can indeed be powerful tools, if used correctly. You know the saying well, I’m sure. ‘Ten fearful men is no match for one man with sharp wit and sharper conviction.’ It is true. All too true. But there is a fine line between believing in yourself, and believing yourself implicitly. Do you know what makes Igin dangerous, Mordin?”

Mordin opened his mouth, before recognizing the rhetoric; he shut his mouth and shook his head instead.

“It is not her connections to those with power, or her vast arsenal, or the scores of men loyal to her. It is not her funds, or her revenue streams, or the favours she is owed. It is her conviction, her belief in herself, her true, deep, infinite knowledge that what she does is always right, Mordin, that makes her the most feared Solus in generations,” Gajai near-whispered, face strict and tone flat. “And for those in the Union who are trusted with its most well-kept secrets, the Solus clan has been for as long as there has been a Union, to some degree, a whispered name. People across the galaxy fear Igin because they see a woman who cannot be swayed or convinced that she is wrong. In her mind, the means always justify the ends, Mordin. Her cruelty, her arrogance, her vindictiveness and viciousness? Igin sees them not as tools, but as basic foundations of who she is and who she must be. For her sake. For the greater good.”

“Warning me not to go down that path? I mean no offense, Dalatrass, but I don’t see myself that way. Not at all,” Mordin protested.

“But I see it in you, Mordin. I do. I really do,” Gajai replied, smiling thinly. “I’ve been a poor mother, by any standard. But I have watched you from the day you were hatched. You have suffered. Immeasurably. And by all accounts, you’ve been the very model of a salarian citizen. But I see it. There is a drive within you to do something great, to accomplish incredible feats. You do not say it, but I sense it. Somewhere, deep behind that kind smile and humble tone, is a man with a goal and the ironclad will to make that dream reality.”

_Getting a little too close for comfort there._

“Now hold on,” Aenon interjected. “You yourself admit that you haven’t been around that much - and I don’t see any sort of, what? Megalomania? I don’t even know what you’re trying to accuse Mordin of-”

“-I’m not accusing Mordin of anything. It’s intuition. Solus intuition, at that.” Gajai shrugged. “I know better than to ignore a gut check. Think of it as both praise and a cautionary tale, perhaps. Once, when I was younger, Igin was nothing more than an older cousin to me. A young woman full of passion. Compassion. Then there was a woman who would do good - do what needed to be done, at any cost. Now, there is Igin as you know her. Think about that.”

Silence, for a moment.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mordin muttered.

Gajai nodded, a thin smile creeping across her face. “That is all I ask. Now,” she continued, the smile growing stronger, “I’ve heard that the you’re the first in your clutch to be accepted into Basic-Intensive, and with a nearly-full set of accolades at that.”

Mordin nodded. “Thank you, Dalatrass.”

“I also note that you wore none of those pins on your dress uniform at graduation,” Gajai pointed out. “Humble? Or did you not want to go through the trouble of lining all of them up?”

“Little bit of both,” Mordin replied with a small shrug. “I don’t like showing off. You should know that. If I could keep a low profile until the day I die, I’ll be happy.”

“You’re a lot like your father, you know,” Gajai said, nodding slowly. “Mohip would be proud. Very proud.”

“Heh. And that’s with me raising him, to boot,” Aenon snorted.

“Some of the credit must lie with you, Aenon. Mordin reflects well on your character,” Gajai replied.

“Since you’re here,” Mordin said, expression growing somber, “can you actually tell me about him? I mean, I know you’ve talked about what he was like, uncle - but who was he? Really? I know he wasn’t a municipal engineer now. And that he didn’t die in a construction accident.”

“I’ve never lied about his personality or character,” Aenon replied, sighing. “He was a stand-up guy. Honest to a fault. Always a joker. You know, once, we were both in a, uh, altercation on Jaëto, and he got one of his legs blown off. Last thing he said as we threw him into the backseat of our exfil vehicle? Before he passed out from blood loss? ‘Gonna need a leg up.’ Never a frown on his face, ever.”

Gajai shook her head, grinning. “Your uncle is correct, Mordin. He hated formality and procedure and, how did he put it - ‘bureaucrats with a gods-damned spreadsheet fetish.’ Or something akin to that.”

“And I wasn’t entirely lying when I said he died in a construction accident,” Aenon continued, eyes shining with memory. “From what I was cleared to learn, he and a few other deep-cover agents were chasing down the leaders of three terrorist groups who were meeting at their home base. We’re talking Tier One, Most Wanted. Kill orders on all three. Two and a half years of undercover work, and Mohip’s team managed to find and infiltrate their base of operations - a high-rise at the centre of a massive arcology one of the groups had built out in the middle of the Terminus. Mohip’s team managed to rig the entire building with explosives, but got betrayed by one of their own before they could set their trap off.

Whole team got dragged into the building to be interrogated. Mohip managed to kill his interrogators despite having a broken arm, killed freed two of his agents, and then fought his way out of the thirty-second basement and up forty floors to get his gear back. All without raising any alarms. Naturally, his detonators had been sabotaged. Mohip and his team manually re-primed the explosives all the way up to floor fifty six before they tripped an alarm. Whole arcology started swarming with mercs, terrorists, you name it. With no way to get to the penthouse quickly, and time running out, Mohip decided to set off the explosives with no delay.”

 

“Perhaps ‘explosives’ is a bit of an understatement,” Gajai scoffed. “Mohip’s turncoat failed to mention that the trap consisted of over six dozen warheads fashioned out of anti-starship missiles. According to eyewitness reports from another STG cell on an unrelated mission, the resulting chain reaction destroyed the entire arcology; the fires burned for nearly a week.”

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Mordin shook his head, eyes wide.

“Badass.”

“Bad-ass, indeed,” Gajai noted with obvious approval. “So there you have it, young man. Your father was no pushover, indeed, and by no means did he simply ‘get himself killed,’ as Igin might dare to put it. Now, I don’t put much stock into things like legacy and lineage - but if you still plan on entering the Intelligence Services, and the STG - that is the reputation you’ll be facing.”

“Not to mention whatever ridiculous scheme Igin’s cooked up,” Aenon spat. “Sometimes I dream she gets food poisoning and shits herself to death.”

“I don’t intend to go out in a blaze of glory. Or to pull off any heroics. But I’ll do my best to live up to Mohip’s standards,” Mordin said after a few moments of thinking. “It won’t be too hard, I think. I’ve been meeting yours after all, uncle.”

Aenon smiled. “Heh. You sure have, kid.”

“And, to what little I see any of the children - the same applies to me,” Gajai added. “And at last we come to the true reason of my visit.” She withdrew a tiny vial of blood, bright-green and watery, thin, weak, without the thickness and richness and wonder-

_-focus, have to focus-_

-and unsealed it, pouring the vial’s contents into her palm.

“This is my blood, to yours,” Gajai said, any hint of humour or happiness gone. “I gift it to you, and in its taking you will have from me a favour in a time of need.”

“You’d give me a blood oath?” Mordin exclaimed, jaw dropping. “Why? I’ve done nothing to deserve it, Dalatrass.”

“Boy,” Gajai muttered, “you can’t be that ignorant. I give you this oath, and in return you serve the clan. You know this.”

“Take it, kid,” Aenon said softly. “This - this is big. Means a lot for you.”

“You, Mordin, will flourish. Against all odds. All. This is my way of giving you my support,” Gajai continued, staring into Mordin’s eyes. “Against anyone who would stop you.”

Mordin blinked.

Blinked again.

Understood the weight of that palmful of blood.

“I understand your gift and receive it in the spirit with which it was given,” Mordin intoned, pressing his palm into Gajai’s. “Mine is the burden to spend your favour with forethought and caution.”

Gajai clasped Mordin’s hand with both of her own, leaned across the table, and somehow her gaze, already locked with his, drilled into his eyes.

“You can accomplish great things, Mordin. Do not forget, however, that greatness and glory are not all that you can achieve - and that there are others who will only ever achieve the same with your help. Remember. We are the Solus, and ours is service to the Union,” Gajai insisted. “It has been that way for as long as our line has existed. Carry the light with you.”

“I will, Dalatrass. I promise,” Mordin replied.

“Good. Good.” Gajai relinquished her grip, and smiled warmly at Mordin. “You make me proud, Mordin. And the rest of the clan - the people who matter - feel the same way. I know they do. I have to leave - but thank you for your promise to me. And you, Aenon - thank you, for all you’ve done.”

“It is my duty and my honour, Dalatrass,” Aenon replied.

“All the same. Best of luck to the both of you - and, if time permits, Mordin, I will do my best to see you before you enter your IS training.” Gajai stood up, and motioned to her guards. “Thank you as always, gentlemen - we’re leaving.”

Mordin and Aenon watched the guards escort Gajai out of their apartment in silence, and after several minutes had passed both exhaled.

“Well that was something,” Aenon sighed. “Gods. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”

“It was nice, though,” Mordin muttered, staring at the slowly-shrinking green bloodstain on his palm. “I’d better go wash this off.”

“Good idea,” Aenon snorted. “Let’s not celebrate by finding out you’ve caught something from her, alright? Go clean that up - I’ll get dinner started, or we can talk about going out. Or something.”

“Sure thing, uncle,” Mordin replied, getting to his feet.

He walked over to his own bathroom, and turned on the faucet, rubbing his bare, unstained palms under the water, mouth salivating as he licked his lips.

 

* * *

 

**EYE OF THE WOMB**

**  
**  
A rune consisting of two eyes, one within another; a straight line divides the rune vertically through its centre, and two lines fork diagonally from the top and bottom of the dividing line.

A simple symbol, compared to many others, but She teaches Her children early on that simple things can have great power.

The bond between mother and child - especially the bond of blood - should never be taken lightly.  
 **  
 **\-----****

****I** **   
__An eye within an eye:_ _

__One for the Mother, who is barren,_ _

__and_ _

__One for the Child, who cannot be._ _

__The Light is the hope that the fields can be made fallow._ _

__The Line is the fear that the fields will be forever salted._ _

__\----_ _   
**  
II  
**   
_1: [Once, there were two young women. The elder of the two held virtue and compassion in the highest regard; the younger of the two, who looked up to the elder, saw this and decided that she too would live a life of virtue and compassion.]_

2: [ **ONCE TASTED THE THIRST FOR BLOOD IS ENDLESS** ]

3: [ **YOU MUST NOT LET IT CONSUME YOU, LITTLE ONE** ]

4: [ **BUT EVEN IF YOU FORGET, DO NOT WORRY** ]

5: [ **I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU** ]

\----

 

* * *

**  
The Citadel  
1st of Fire  
2661 Galactic Standard**

 

“First time on the Citadel?”

Mordin turned to the asari sitting next to him, and shook his head with a small grin. “I’ve been once before when I was a kid - well, a little kid - though I suppose I’m a kid to you still - but spent most of the visit in the hospital. Older now, get to see the Citadel for real - I’m excited.”

The asari shrugged, returning Mordin’s smile. “Heh. Well, how old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“Well, relatively, you are a bit younger than me, I think,” she replied, scrunching her brow in thought. “Eleven. You’re going into university, right? Or around that age?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm. Well, I’m eighty-three, so I’d say in salarian terms that’d kind of, uh, roughly, maybe I’d be around twenty or so? Maybe a little younger.” The woman nodded, seemingly to herself. “Mhmm. So yeah, sure, in hard numbers you’re younger. But really, not really. So? What’s gotten you off Sur’Kesh? Getting in a little travelling before you jump on the academic grind?”

“What? No, no way,” Mordin protested. “Got a family member who landed me an office job on the Citadel. Figured I’d, you know, go out, see the galaxy a bit while I’m young.” He snorted, and stared out the window at the Citadel and the endless lines of starship traffic surrounding it.

“Fancy yourself an explorer?”

“Have to start somewhere. Citadel seemed as good a place as any, I guess. What about you?” Mordin turned back to the asari passenger with a smirk. “‘Academic grind’ sort of gave away a bit, to be fair.”

The woman sighed. “Yup. Technically I’ve graduated from the UT, but I’m still stuck to it. I’m stuck on the Citadel while I wait for my latest grant request to go through.”

Mordin winced. “Yeesh. I’ll stick to my office job, thanks. Up-front pay. No extra work. No overtime. I mean, re-”

“Good evening,” came the captain’s voice over the cabin intercom. “We’ve been cleared for approach and landing; assuming no further delays you can expect to be on the Citadel in eight minutes. Please ensure that you have any documents required for processing ready before landing. Thank you.”

“Now this is something you’ll want to see,” the asari said eagerly. “First time docking in the Citadel - keep your eyes peeled.”

“Will do.” Mordin leaned up against his window and watched as the small passenger transport he’d taken off Sur’Kesh slid through traffic and approached the Citadel; the massive station, little more than a cluster of lights and barely-visible metal he’d seen from near the system’s mass relay, grew larger and larger. Details became clear; Mordin could make out the endless rows of buildings and structures upon the Citadel’s arms, and his eyes began to itch.

 _Wait, what?_

He squinted, craning his neck so far forward that his forehead was nearly touching the window.

 _Nothing looks wrong. Impressive, for sure. But nothing wrong. Why?_

“You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Mordin glanced back at the asari and smiled. “It’s just a lot to take in, you know? Like, I remember the Citadel, but now, you know, I get it. How important, how big it is. Kind of.”

 _Something’s wrong. Something’s off._

“Right? I think a lot of people forget what a marvel of archeology, of history the Citadel is,” the woman agreed, brightening visibly. “To find a Prothean relic - a self-repairing marvel of engineering and culture - in such well-maintained condition that all galactic societies can call it a home of sorts - it’s just incredible.”

“It’s routine, or it gets to be. Can’t imagine people care about where the Citadel comes from once you’ve been there for decades,” Mordin noted, ignoring the rippling flesh and bone within his skull. “History’s less important when you’ve got, I dunno, bills to pay.”

“Don’t remind me,” the asari groaned. “Oh, man. Bills. I’d almost forgotten about those. Goddess. And don’t think I don’t see you smirking there - you’re working on the Citadel, sooner or later you’re going to be swamped with them. Next thing you know, you’ll be wondering where all your credits are going.”

“Fair enough, fair enough.” Mordin returned his unerring gaze on the Citadel and kept his attention there until the ship pulled into a crowded docking bay. He waited for the asari next to him to get her various bags together before following her out of the ship and into the line which lead towards the row of C-Sec Customs booths at the far end of the hangar; he was sent into a different line from the asari, and he waved at her before shutting his eyes and breathing deeply.

 _Something’s wrong. I don’t understand. Head. Skin. Eyes. Spine. Everything’s itchy. Everything itches._

 _Perhaps the Citadel holds some secret? Or maybe these precursors of your galactic society - these Protheans - managed to touch the eldritch, in some way, and left a mark here indicating as such?_

 _No evidence to support that though. Still - it makes sense. Maybe...maybe I can see it, just me. I have the Sight and the Insight. Plain Doll, is there anyone else who you’ve empowered?_

 _No, little one; you are Her Herald, alone in your power and station._

 _Still possible. Maybe another creature like the Moonlit Shepherdess and her - your - people? Just - hrm - hiding? In Citadel space?_

 _Possible, yes, though I myself do not think that is the case. She has extended Her senses to the spaces you call home, and felt nothing so grand as the Great Ones she knows of, let alone Herself._

 _I don’t like this. Can Great Ones conceal their presence from others of their own kind?_

 _I am unaware of the answer. In my own experience, the answer is no. Of course, in the vastness of all the worlds and planes which comprise the universe…_

 _I’ll have to investigate this. Eventually. Somehow. For now, customs._

 

Mordin’s full attention - previously split with a tiny focus on the line in front of him - returned to the customs agent manning the booth he was now standing in front of; an exhausted-looking turian took the forms Mordin fished out of his coat pocket, propped them up on a small stand, watched Mordin hold his left arm under the omnitool scanner built into the exterior of the booth and began typing into his terminal,

“Good evening, Mr. Solus. What’s the purpose and duration of your visit?” the turian officer asked flatly.

“Here to work for the Jatin Group; not sure how long I’ll be here but I’ve got my work permit and semi-permanent residence papers in order,” Mordin explained. “Already got a place lined up, and I can’t stay for more than five years without a renewal.”

“Thanks for having your papers - and your other details - in order,” the officer replied, looking up with a relieved smile. “Wouldn’t believe how often I have to dig this out of people. So you’ve got everything worked out then?” The turian picked up the papers Mordin had given him and nodded as he read them. “Okay - one moment. Let me just scan this and you’ll be free to go.”

A few moments later, the gates barring Mordin’s way chimed as they retracted into the side of the customs booth, and the turian officer nodded at him.

“I’m all good?”

“All good. Welcome to the Citadel - hope you enjoy your time here.”

Mordin returned the officer’s smile, took a deep breath, and walked forward, following a small tunnel which opened up into a large, bustling concourse filled with people of every race, stature and position; dozens of holoboards advertised everything from chauffeuring companies to nearby hotels, and it nearly took Mordin a full minute to find the exit which would lead him to the public shuttle terminal. Carefully weaving his way through the crowds - tourist, immigrants and residents alike - Mordin found the landing pad for the Presidium shuttles, swiped his omnitool over the payment pad blocking the entrance and lined up, blending into the seemingly infinite mass of people lining up along the transitway. Within minutes enough airbuses had come and gone that Mordin was able to find a spot on one, and he stood by one of the windows of the cramped vehicle as it soared into the air and through the Citadel’s ever-moving lines of traffic.  
 _  
This is, indeed, quite something. During your last visit here, your sight was so much smaller, your body so much weaker, that I could ill afford to take in this sight. A vista to behold, yes. Never have I seen a thing like this._

Mordin frowned - both at the Plain Doll’s words, and because there was a rather large krogan next to him who was, despite trying to remain still, bumping into him occasionally with just enough force to be annoying.  
 _  
The Citadel is a marvel, sure. But really? This is something you find unique? It’s a space station. A fancy, unique, ancient one, but a space station nonetheless. And you’ve seen other races before on Sur’Kesh plenty of times._

 _We have none of these ‘space stations’ on or around our world, little one, and-_

 _-I’m sorry, what?  
_  
Mordin could feel a small throbbing in the base of his skull that he’d long since learned to associate with the Doll approaching something akin to annoyance or frustration; if he focused hard enough, he could even see a glimpse of her sulking frown out of the corner of his vision.  
 _  
You find this difficult to believe? I have told you before, little one, that the people I represent and speak for never did progress beyond the typewriter and the analytical engine. Do you not recall the difference between the rocketry of your peoples and ours?_

 _I - yeah, sure, but your people aren’t really people, right? They’re...eldritch gods. I’m the herald of one. How does a space station even compare to that? Sure, your people built explosive...hammer..things, instead of actual rockets, but clearly you’ve achieved space travel and the like._

 _Can I not appreciate the labour and craftsmanship which went into the construction of this place? Or the harmonious relations which allow so many creatures from so many worlds to share a single home?_

 _Hit a nerve, huh._

The Plain Doll made a noise - or a feeling - like a _hrmph_ , and Mordin had to suppress a grin.  
 _  
I’m sorry for teasing you._

 _As you should be._

He felt the small smile behind the words, and relaxed a little, his worries instead turning back to the now fading - but ever present - itching sensation which filled him.

 _So. Facts. Protheans built this place. Asari found it first after they disappeared. Somewhere in between, they - or someone - left something my blood doesn’t like._

 _Perhaps these Protheans ascended to the ranks of a higher realm? If my peoples achieved such a feat, it would be arrogant to assume there would be no other who could do the same._

 _Again, possible, but no evidence. In fairness, not a lot of evidence there, period. Bears investigating, maybe._

 _Will your new masters look kindly upon such a venture?_

 _Masters? You make it sound like slavery._

 _They do control your fate. Let us dispense with kind words; to serve your peoples’ spymasters - or any - may be noble, but I do not think even you can believe it is a free or liberating line of work._

T _hey won’t care if I read history books. Can write it off as a, uh, passion. Something on the side. They might even approve of it. Builds my cover, no?_

 _Mmm. Fair enough. You do have advantages in that regard, as well._

 _I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, actually. Gotten through most of the library in the study - at least three quarters. Is that really everything I can learn? At least for now?_

 _Ah, for now, perhaps. We shall have to see. It has, after all, been quite some time since our last check; you are very in tune with your Sight, indeed. Allow me to commune with the Lunar Womb; we shall discuss an expansion of the study. Perhaps even the Dream._

 _I’m looking forward to it. Mansion’s nice and all, and so are my additions - but you said there’d be more to it, a long time ago._

 _Indeed, so I did. I think you will approve._

 _Still not going to give me the tea recipe, though?_

 _No, the Plain Doll replied, laughing slightly. A woman - doll or not - must keep some secrets._

 _One day I’m going to get my version of it right._

 _Ah, I think not. Not yet._

 _In time?_

 _Yes. In time._

“Now arriving at Presidium Central. Now arriving at Presidium Central,” came a synthesized voice. “Transfers here for all lines.”

“There’s my stop,” Mordin muttered. Checking to make sure his satchel was firmly attached, he pushed his way out of the airbus and onto the transit platform; before him lay the luxurious expanse of the Presidium, all higher-end markets, astronomically expensive apartments and massive high-rises. Sparing only a second to mentally check the map he’d been shown, Mordin quickly and confidently began walking towards the Jatin Group’s Citadel Branch building which was only a few blocks away from the station - and in short order, he’d arrived.

Tucked between two massive high-rises, each one at least two hundred or so stories tall - the Bank of Thessia’s main Citadel office and the headquarters of Elanus Risk Control Services - was the Jatin Group building. It occupied a space in between the downright utilitarian gunmetal grey rectangle of the Elanus building and the luxurious wood-steel-glass spiral of the Bank of Thessia; the Jatin Group’s office was mostly a stainless-steel obelisk, inlaid with simple patterning around its various windows and sporting a large soft-blue spiral logo prominently at its peak.

 _Well, here’s home for the next five years, if all goes well,_  Mordin though with a mix of excitement and frustration.  _Can’t wait for all the marvel of the Citadel to wear off._

 _A bookkeeper's life can be exciting, if looked at the right way, little one. Not to mention, you will hardly be a mere bookkeeper._

 _I’m not going to be a suit-wearing, galaxy-trotting superspy, you know. I bet most of my days are going to consist of sitting around drinking coffee and reading finance reports._

 _You do not have coffee,_  the Plain Doll said with consternation.  _I do wish to try whatever it is I am sensing from you._

 _Uh, hold on,_  Mordin said, stepping off the sidewalk to get out of the way of the various office workers who were glaring at him.  _Gotta focus._  Marshaling his thoughts, Mordin felt for the link between his mind and the Plain Doll’s, and did his best to dim the warm light between them.  _Tupossa?_

 _Tu-pos-sa,_  the Plain Doll repeated slowly. _Ah, I believe I recall it. It is a drink taken by the turians, yes?_

 _Yeah_ , Mordin replied, letting the light grow stronger once again.  _Aenon’s had it a few times, but it’s not really popular amongst salarians. Too weak for us - and I’ve never gotten around to trying it. I hear it’s kind of funky-tasting._

 _I would like to try it nonetheless._

 _Well, if you insist, I’ll try some for you to replicate._

 _Thank you. I appreciate it, little one._

 _No problem._

A warm smile on his face, Mordin returned to the sidewalk and pushed through the revolving doors of the Jatin Group building; the minimalist lobby was surprisingly empty, and Mordin had barely sat down on one of the lobby’s strangely comfortable couches before one of the receptionists, a young salarian wearing the blue-white uniform of the Jatin Group, waved him over.

“Hello, sir,” the man said, nodding. “Can I help you today?”

“Hi there, name’s Mordin Solus,” Mordin replied cheerfully.

“Oh! Oh, right, I’ve got you down here somewhere,” the receptionist noted, checking his terminal’s display. “Yeah. You’re here to start working, right? Fresh from Sur’Kesh?”

“That’s right.”

“Wonderful. Just head up the leftmost elevator that way,” the receptionist said, pointing at a group of elevators set into the walls behind the reception desk, “and head to floor ninety. Someone’ll do a quick debrief - don’t worry, it’ll only be the basics. You’ll get the keys to your new apartment and be at home within an hour or so, promise.”

“Alright. Thanks,” Mordin answered; he walked over to the elevator the receptionist had pointed at, entered, and hit the button for floor ninety.

The elevator moved downwards; the display ticked down for a minute until it stopped at the sixth basement level. The doors hissed open to reveal a long, narrow hallway marked ‘Physical Archives & Data Repository,’ lined with doors on each side of the corridor; without waiting for the doors to open fully, Mordin took off at a brisk walk down the hall, stopping at the door marked ‘Archive 90 - Records, Holdings, 2200-2210.’ He knocked twice, and the door swung open; several office workers - mostly salarian, though two asari and a krogan were among the group - were standing in a cramped room, sorting through filing cabinets which stretched from floor to ceiling. One of the salarian workers looked at Mordin, made a quick cutting gesture over his mouth, and jerked a hand at one of the filing cabinets tucked into the farthest corner of the room.

Mordin walked over to the cabinet and looked back as the door to the room automatically sealed; the second it did, the workers closest to the door sealed it with both an electronic lock and a physical bar. Another pair tapped their omnitools before pushing the cabinet inwards, until it locked into another wall, forming a small alcove; Mordin stepped into it and to the side. As the cabinet began retracting, the salarian who’d gestured for him to be silent moved both hands up and down his sides, then grinned and winked at him once the cabinet sealed the tiny space, leaving Mordin in complete darkness.

He quickly took off his satchel, stripped out of his clothes and crammed his clothes inside; seconds later, the wall on the opposite side of the cabinet slid open, and with his bag in tow Mordin stepped through into even tinier room, this one holding no less than two dozen slim doors and a single uniformed salarian - who was waiting with omnitool active and handgun drawn.

“Bag,” the man said flatly; Mordin compiled and tossed the bag onto the concrete floor. Pistol still trained in Mordin’s direction, the man launched a small incineration shot from his omnitool, disintegrating his bag of clothing into a smoldering pile of ashes. In response, Mordin raised his arms; the man scanned Mordin, checked his omnitool, then tucked his pistol into his jacket. “Funeral.”

“Party.”

“Tax.”

“Bloodline.”

“Sand.”

“Terrify.”

The man nodded; never taking his eyes off Mordin, he stepped backwards, and rapped one of the doors behind him. “Clear?”

“Clear,” came a muffled voice. “Let him in.”

“Go,” the man grunted.

Mordin nodded and pushed his way through the door; beyond was a cavernous room packed to bursting with salarians working at various terminals and workstations, none of whom paid him any attention. The man closest to the door was dark-skinned, tall, and had a severe sort of face - but his tone was jovial, and he extended an arm, which Mordin took.

“I ask for a Solus and they send me a kid,” the man said with a smirk. “Lieutenant Sehik Rentola - nice to finally meet you, Mordin.”

“Don’t let the LT give you a hard time,” one of the agents in the back of the room shouted, not even bothering to glance up from his terminal. “Sur’Kesh sends its best to the Citadel.”

“I was joking,” Sehik sighed. “Seriously, Mordin - it was a joke.”

“Your jokes are garbage,” the agent interjected. “Nobody likes them.”

“Nobody likes you, Imnes,” Sehik snorted.

“Yeah, but I admit I’m a sack of shit,” the agent replied; the room erupted into mild laughter, and Sehik grunted in response.

“Laugh it up, you idiots. Don’t mind them - and really, I meant nothing by it,” Sehik said, turning back to Mordin as the same lazy smirk he’d shown before crept back onto his face. “Honestly. I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do. I’ll give you the rundown of how things work?”

“Sure thing. Pleasure to meet you too, Lieutenant,” Mordin replied.

“Don’t call me that. Sehik’s fine. Lieutenant Rentola, too, if that sorta stuff matters to you,” Sehik said, waving a hand.

“Can, uh, I get some clothes before we do the whole debriefing thing?”

“Don’t let him tell you that being naked for debrief is tradition,” Imnes shouted.

“I - fuck off, Imnes, seriously, I did that once, and that was for a bet,” Sehik spat.

Another agent glanced over and nodded at Mordin with a smile. “Nope. Never living it down.”

“Gods. I was going to get him geared up, if you morons would shut up for a second. Get back to work!”

“Yes, sir,” the men in the room groaned.

“Come on,” Sehik said, rubbing at his forehead. “Follow me - we’ll get you clothed and ready to go.”

Mordin followed Sehik through the room, past a tall, vertical holoboard covered in various notes and maps, and into what looked like an armoury of sorts; a set of clothes and a satchel, all identical to the ones he’d worn previously, were sitting on a workbench. Mordin quickly put them on, and Sehik flashed Mordin a smile.

“Better?”

“Better,” Mordin replied. “I knew things here would be different, but I have to admit even I’m a little surprised at the way things are set up here. Anyone caught onto it yet?”

“I’m sure the Big Two have their suspicions,” Sehik replied, shrugging as he opened a nearby footlocker, “but they’ve got nothing concrete. Everything down here is shielded, and all the terminals here are disconnected from any sort of network; anyone gets suspicious, we’ve got enough failsafes and data-replacers to make the whole op down here look squeaky clean. Here’s your gear.” Sehik pulled a small case out of the locker and set it on the workbench; Mordin popped it open, revealing several rows of prepaid credit chits, and a micro-OSD. “There's a small stipend for you to purchase a firearm; you'll find all the applications you need to fill to get your firearms permit started on the OSD. Most of it's been taken care of already, but there are a few things you'll need to verify in-person at a C-Sec branch. Get it done sooner rather than later, and please,  _please_  get your permit before buying a gun, okay?"

“Who does that?” Mordin said, scanning the OSD and tucking the credit chits into his coat. "Isn't that just common sense?"

“Yeah, and you’d be surprised as to how often it’s happened. Mostly older operatives who haven't posted on the Citadel before. They get antsy, not having a gun on them, or something.” Sehik snorted. “You get caught, you get dinged with smuggling a gun onto the Citadel. We’re talking fines out the cloaca and - if you’re lucky - a year of jail time. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Good. Now, your job’s split between working topside as a receptionist and doing analytics - or whatever comes up - down in the basements. You only go into this room via the same way; codes change every six hours. Here’s a one-time-pad,” Sehik added, passing Mordin a thick packet of palm-sized papers. “Covers the codes for the next month. Memorize the whole thing before you go, have Oran dispose of it on the way out. You’ve got an apartment in Zakera; details are on your omni. You want to upgrade, that’s on you. Any questions?”

“No, I think I’m good,” Mordin replied, nodding slowly. “Just excited to start.”

“Get back to me in a month or two and let me know how that works out,” Sehik replied, grinning. “If you’re a fan of the Pit by then, I’ll have you certified as mentally ill.”

“That’s your name for this place?” Mordin asked, gesturing back out into the operations centre outside the armory. “I thought you’d have a cooler name.”

“Nope. Covert Action gets all the cool names,” Sehik said, shrugging. “Get used to it.”

“Shame,” Mordin sighed, sitting down at the workbench. “Anything else I should know for now?”

“Nope. We’ll do a proper debrief tomorrow after you finish your cover training,” Sehik explained as he left the armoury. “We’re busy, and I’ve got work to do - so get that pad in your head, and enjoy the rest of your day off, alright?”

“Sure thing. Thanks, Sehik.”

“No problem. Welcome aboard, Mordin.”

Turning his attention back to the one-time-pad, Mordin quickly flipped through its pages; a few minutes later, he got up, and made his way back out the operations centre - letting Oran take the pad - and returned to the main floor back the way he’d came. He exited the building, taking care to say goodbye to the receptionist - and walked out into the eternal sunlight of the Presidium.

 _I suppose this is it, then. Finally starting my STG career for real._

 _Indeed. How are you feeling? To be away from a desk on Sur’Kesh, and in the centre of the galaxy’s events?_

 _I wouldn’t go that far._

 _Regardless._

 _Feels strange. I’ve got a long way to where I need to be. Just - I’m ready, but it’s still...humbling. To see what I have to do. And the galaxy I have to change. To prepare._

 _Ah, but the humble man is often the greater one, no?_

 _Heh. I suppose. Guess I could start by finding my new home._

 _Yes, I believe that would be the best course of action. I, myself, am interested to see what your first true offworld home will be like._

 _Probably a small, tiny apartment? Mordin smiled inwardly as he set off towards the transit station._

 _That may be true, but every home contains in itself a bit of history and unique character._

 _I...guess?_

 _Recall that I have resided within this Dream, more or less since the time of my creation. It has changed a great deal, yes, but I have only ever called this place home, in the strictest sense. Sharing my Sight with you has, and continues to be, one of my truest delights._

 _Thanks, Plain Doll. I try to keep it interesting._

I _ndeed you do! Ah, and imagine all the things you shall eat and drink. I expect variety in the days to come, little one._

 _You do realize that, technically, I’m on a receptionist’s budget. At a big company, sure, but it’s not like I’m going to have the biggest bank account in town._

 _Oh, I am aware, little one, but surely on the Citadel there must be a great deal of things that one may purchase with a poor man’s wealth?_

 _Hah! You’re not wrong. And I promise - I will._

 _You laugh at me._

 _No, no! I just think it’s...funny. How weird this all is. How insane this situation is. Okay, I am kind of laughing at you. I knew you had a penchant for teas and foods and the like, but this is the first time I’ve seen you interested - this interested in what I eat and drink._

 _Am I misguided? I have been with you more or less since the time of your hatching; I have experienced only what you have seen, felt, and consumed. Surely it is natural to show excitement over an entire galaxy’s worth of novel culture to examine._

 _You’re not wrong,_  Mordin replied as he got onto another airbus, attention and eyes and  _Eyes_  now evenly split between his conversation and the world around him.  _To be fair, I’ve only ever seen you drink tea, though._

 _Time passes differently within the Dream. You know this. I have many hours to spend in relative solitude when you do not sleep._

 _And, what, you pass the time by eating and drinking?_

 _Is it not considered rude to eat in front of others when they do not join you at the dining table?_

 _I - no? Not really?_

 _I find myself uncomfortable with the idea, I will admit._

 _No. No way. You’re - you’re embarrassed to eat in front of me?_

 _I said no such thing._

 _You totally did._

 _I did not, little one._

 _Uh-huh._

The Plain Doll sighed as the airbus descended into a transit tunnel, but said nothing for a few moments.

 _Sorry? I didn’t mean anything by it._

 _No apologies are required. Merely - hmm. I dislike eating while in this form, let us say._

 _Uh, what? Why? If you don’t mind me asking. I mean, you drink - mostly tea, I admit - in that form._

 _To consume fluids is a trifle for me in this form; there is little for me to hide. Food is another matter; remember, little one, that the act of consumption - of flesh - holds weight that mere blood does not, especially in the Dream._

 _That doesn’t make any sense. I thought blood was the weightiest thing there is._

 _In concrete terms, yes. Recall, though, that my true nature is hidden from you through the blood’s changing. To hide my visage, I must always be, in some small way, aware of that changing, cognizant of the process. To eat - to eat flesh, or solid matter - and maintain this form would be...difficult, for me. Not impossible, mind you._

 _Oh. Uh, I didn’t know. Sorry._

 _Once again, you need not apologize._

 _You could just show me what you actually look like, you know._

 _I - hmm. I am unsure if you are ready._

 _We’ve established that you’re alien. To the Citadel’s knowledge, anyway. What harm would there be in me seeing what you truly look like?_

 _To see me, little one, is to begin to know the truths of all things. I am linked to you in a very special manner; your being in the Herald’s Dream is, in and of itself, a powerful thing, and my being within your Dream is yet another. Conceptually, to see me as I am, to remove the coverings on your eyes, is to strengthen that light between us. I fear, then, that with those barriers falling away, I will not be able to shield you from certain knowledge. I am powerful in my own way - but the Moonlit Shepherdess is something else entirely._

Mordin’s smile faded as he thought.  _Okay. Okay. I get that. But - hrm. My Eyes are matured. How else can I grow my Insight? I’ve already been taking blood whenever I can._

 _You will need more, I am afraid._

 _Hmm. Citadel’s a big place - has to be a way for me to get more. But quality’s still a problem, I bet. On the one hand - Citadel posting was good for climbing the ladder of influence. But combat posting would have given me better access to blood, right?_

 _That is correct. In truth, I had not considered this to be a problem; after all, even with the little blood you have made your own, it has been enough to strengthen you far beyond your peers. On the physical plane, you have nothing to fear from illness, or the like, though grave wounds shall still present a problem for you._

 _Well I don’t think asari matriarchs and turian commandos are in the habit of just donating their blood to public firms for resale. That’s going to be a problem in the short term. How far am I from the threshold of - what did you call it? Channeling?_

 _It is hard for me to quantify. I have never channeled the blood of the untouched, after all; I can only estimate by sensation and feeling, and even then it is hardly an accurate one. I would say it is akin to wondering if a piece of meat is cooked merely by poking at it; one can arrive at a reasonable approximation, but without a thermometer you cannot possibly hope to know the temperature within._

 _Damn. I’ll take the estimate, then._

 _You are - close. Fairly close, I believe. The first blood you took - Gajai’s offering - was a strong one; mother as she is to you in some way, and it was weighted with a heaviness of concept. I believe that without it you would, indeed, be quite a quantity away from it._

 _Close isn’t bad. Just have to get myself a steady supply of blood, then. Wonder what a good cover for it would be, though…_

Mordin mulled over the idea, running through the ways he could spin acquiring however much blood he’d need to grow his Insight; in fact-

“Now arriving at Lower Zakera C-Six-Three-Zero. Now arriving at Lower Zakera C-Six-Three-Zero.”

-so lost in thought was he that Mordin almost didn’t notice his stop. Jerking upright, he quickly got up and left the airbus; he’d stepped out into a quiet part of the otherwise bustling Zakera Ward. The neighbourhood he was in, while hardly a slum by any stretch of the imagination, was a far cry from the brightly-lit glamour and ritz of the Presidium; this was all neon and dark metal, with endless apartments stacked on top of shops, bars and restaurants. Mordin’s address was a ten minute walk away from the stop, and he took in the sights as he made his way towards his new home; he passed everything from gun stores and turian barbecue stalls, noting each and every detail of his new neighbourhood.

Eventually he arrived at his apartment complex; it was a series of high-rises packed into the side of Zakera, and while it was entirely undecorated from the outside Mordin appreciated that fact that it was separated from the main Zakera strip by a small gate. It would do nothing to deter any would-be criminals, but any of the numerous drunken partygoers he’d passed would be hard pressed to clamber over the thing.

Waving his way past the gate with his omnitool, Mordin took a surprisingly-clean elevator up to the fiftieth floor and walked over to apartment ten; he even managed to say hello to his neighbour in apartment eleven - a young turian woman who smiled, waved, and said nothing to him as she enjoyed a chemstick on the balcony. Another swipe of his omnitool opened his doors, and inside was his new home: faux-wood flooring, unpainted beige walls and just enough furnishing to meet the definition of a “pre-furnished apartment.” Mordin entered, kicked off his boots, locked the door behind him with both electronic and physical locks, and made a quick check of his apartment; it had a combined kitchen-living room with a tiny couch, a small bedroom with just enough space for a single bed, closet, locker and desk, and a bathroom that might have fit a krogan, if he was being charitable.

 _Home sweet home. Honestly, it’s nicer than I thought it’d be._

 _What will you do now? Rest?_

 _Nah. I’d like to do a little shopping - bed’s got no sheets, I’ve got no toiletries, and there’s nothing in the fridge, right? Might as well do a little research, check out some shops nearby. Light recon._

 _Ah. That seems prudent._

Mordin sighed and walked over to the fridge; it was small, reaching only up to his chest, but he figured it’d be enough to hold whatever perishables he had. Popping it open, Mordin paused as he noticed a small piece of paper inside.

Looking around with a frown, he carefully and slowly picked it up.

 

 _Welcome to the Citadel._

 _Have fun in jail, shithead._

 _Go fuck yourself,_

 _Mom_  


  
A quick succession of knocks on the door.

“This is C-Sec! Open up!”

 

 

Mordin blinked.

“This is C-Sec! Mordin Solus, we have a warrant to search your residence! Open up! This is your last warning!”  
 _  
Well, that was fast. Thought I’d have a day to get settled_ , Mordin thought as he sprinted over to the bedroom; he threw off his coat, flopped onto his bed and closed his eyes.

He opened them to find himself standing in the manor courtyard; the Plain Doll was waiting for him, seated at her usual place.

“Oh, little one,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “Will you Claim them?”

“No. Too easy,” Mordin grumbled as he joined the Plain Doll at the table; she poured him a cup of tea, and he took it, staring into its depths with a scowl. “I mean, I haven’t tested on live subjects, but it’d work. Probably. For sure. But - but there’d be questions. Lots of them, fast, and nothing I could answer easily. And a first-time Claiming against their will, all in one burst? I’d be sloppy. And that’s a no-go, especially if they ever get physicals.”

“Then you will submit, I assume,” she replied, nodding. “Prisons upon the physical plane - your physical plane, in any case - will not hold you. Not for any consequential amount of time.”

“Mmm. I’ll figure something out. Just have to figure out details first, though. My Eyes and blood didn’t sense anything out of the ordinary,” Mordin muttered, scratching at his chin. “So that means no traps? Obvious choice is to say that there’s something planted here. But that’ll be easy to wave away, especially if I can get some help.”

“Can you rely on your newfound colleagues?” The Plain Doll looked at Mordin with a tilt of her head. “Is your birth-mother herself not a part of the same Special Tasks Group?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I suppose,” Mordin admitted. “Having sway isn’t the same as having total control, though. I wonder if Sehik will get someone to bail me out. Maybe. Might as well just see what happens.”

“Very well. I shall, as always, be watching with anticipation.”

Mordin opened his eyes as a mighty crash signaled his door being broken down; affecting a shocked and surprised look, he stormed out into the hallway to find himself facing no less than a half-dozen C-Sec officers, all of whom had their handguns trained on him.

One of the turian officers at the front of the group gestured at Mordin with his handgun. “ON THE GROUND, NOW!”

“Whoa, whoa, what in the hells?” Mordin protested, arms raised. “What’s going on? I - I just woke up - I just got here! What are-”

“-ON THE GROUND, NOW,” the turian roared. “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!”

“Okay, okay, look, I’m getting on the ground,” Mordin replied, getting on his knees and putting his hands on his head. “The hells did I do wrong?”

“We’ve got a warrant to search your residence,” another officer - batarian, by voice - said flatly. “Multiple tips regarding possible weapons smuggling. Just sit down, stay quiet, and if you’re innocent this will all be over soon.”

The officers spread out and began scanning Mordin’s new apartment with omnitools and handheld devices; within seconds they were digging through what little possessions Mordin had brought with him.

“We’ve found something,” another turian officer yelled; the man in question dragged the metal footlocker that had been stashed in Mordin’s bedroom out into the living room. “Multiple positive IDs.”

“Open it up,” the batarian officer ordered.

“You can open it,” Mordin replied, shrugging. “I moved in here less than twenty minutes ago - I haven’t even set a password up yet.”

The batarian officer looked at the turian who’d lead the group into the apartment; the group’s leader opened the case, revealing a variety of compacted small-arms ranging from rifles to handguns. Both glared at Mordin, and the batarian officer hissed. “What do you have to say about this?”

“If I was some sort of smuggler,” Mordin said, shaking his head, “do you really think I’d keep my illegal goods in an open locker in plain sight?”

“Nobody said you were smart,” the turian barked. “None of the guns are registered, and you don’t even have a firearms permit. Under C-Sec Authority and Code you are now under arrest on suspicion of possessing multiple firearms without a license, bringing firearms aboard the Citadel without a transit permit, and resisting arrest. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say from this point forward will be noted and may be used in evidence.”

“Resisting arrest? I’m just sitting here,” Mordin scoffed as another officer clamped his hands behind his back.

“You failed to open your doors when ordered to.”

“I was asleep.”

“A likely story. On your feet!”

Grabbed on both sides by officers, Mordin was hoisted to his feet and marched outside to the balcony; the commotion had drawn the attention of his neighbours, and Mordin sighed as he saw the confused looks on their faces. The officers half-walked half-dragged him over to a waiting paddy wagon, and they stuffed him into the back.

Mordin checked his omnitool, noted that its signal was being jammed, and swore as the doors slammed shut, leaving him in total darkness - until his eyes, both sets, acclimated, showing him the cramped confines of the compartment through a slightly grey filter.

_Fantastic. Just the impression I wanted to make,_ Mordin grumbled to himself.  
 _  
Perhaps you should be thankful that the audience here seems limited to other workers and the like? Igin could very well have engineered a more public form of humiliation - or harm._

_I suppose. Jail’s not the issue, so much as my reputation. This could make good leverage in the future, no?_

_You have tools at your disposal to mitigate such things._

_I’d rather not go, uh, changing people like that without good cause._

_What cause is greater than yours? Who else can say that contact between the mundane and the eldritch rests upon their shoulders?_

_I mean, still, though, if I screw up, you and the Lunar Womb can always pick another Herald. Wait for, well, forever. Try again. Right?_

_This is true. But even so, a success on the first try would be best. And, of course, we - the Gentle Mother and I - are invested, deeply so, in your success and well-being. You are dear to us, loved by us, held by us. You can not be harmed, not truly, not while you are in our care - but you can still be wounded._

_Thanks. I - I know, I know it’s true. But it means a lot, hearing that from you._

You are welcome. Always.

_Still leaves what I should do now hanging, though._

_You will have to wait, I presume. Would it not be rash to plan an escape, or a course of violent action, if you might very well be freed from prison shortly?_

_Planning and doing are two different things._

_Fair enough._

Mordin sighed, and scratched at his chin.  _Still wish I’d found more time to experiment on Claiming. Would be handy to have some portable eyes, or something._

_Well, if you find yourself imprisoned for an extended period of time, I am sure you will be able to do so with ease. Prisons, in my knowledge, are filled with people whose habits and homes are fixed._

_I was more talking about on, I don’t know, animals. Live subjects. Not necessarily people._

_You still fear the power._

_Well, yes. It’s a responsibility. To Claim is to spread Her power. I don’t want to do that, not without serious caution. And there’s the ethics of it. I - I’d never forgive myself, Claiming another person against their will if I had any other choice. Making some dead fish flop around is one thing. That’s another._

_We have discussed this at length. You need not fear. Burdens, responsibilities - those things should be respected. Not feared._

_It’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to be the Herald._

_Ah, but I must advise him, and nurture him,_  the Plain Doll said with an audible, visible smile that poked into the corner of his vision. _I will not claim to be the more burdened between the two of us, but I too have my duties. Of course, my job has been made much simpler thanks to you. A fine son to Aenon and a marvelous Herald to the Lunar Womb; I could ask for no more._

_So far, anyways,_ Mordin snorted.  _And you don’t have the same perspective I do. Claiming, changing someone, even with their consent - that’s a big step to take. For you? And your people? No big deal. You’re multidimensional and functionally immortal. You talk about “physical planes.” Your very existence is power. Your form of writing has power. We’re talking changes that drive people mad._

_I - yes, I do understand, I think. You must forgive me; my creation was hardly a mundane thing, and my existence since then has been anything but mortal._

_I know. I wasn’t trying to be rude. Or to offend._

_It is alright, little one. I know you intended no such thing._

The rest of the ride passed in near-silence; Mordin counted the minutes in his head. Five, ten, twenty minutes passed without any sign that the vehicle’s engine had ever stopped, and Mordin frowned.

_Odd. We should have stopped by now - there’s no way my apartment’s more than a ten minute drive away from a holding facility. Maybe I’m getting dumped right into prison? Or being transferred off the Citadel?_

In fact, it wasn’t until nearly forty minutes had passed that the car came to an audible halt, its landing gear sending a short shudder through the floor of the rear compartment. Seconds later the doors swung open, and Mordin blinked as he realized that the car was inside some sort of motor pool; a dozen or so C-Sec officers, different from the ones who had arrested him, were waiting outside, rifles at a low ready.

“Out,” a salarian officer barked. “There’s a yellow line on the floor. Follow it slowly. No sudden movements. Clear?”

“Clear,” Mordin replied; he walked out of the paddy wagon and slowly began following the line as the officers kept a loose cordon around him. Soon enough he passed through a set of automated security hatches, and entered a long corridor lined with cells. Most of them were empty, and the few prisoners being held there paid Mordin no attention. Seemingly at random, the officers in front of him chose a cell, scanned the contact pad on the exterior hatch, and shoved Mordin through the doorway as it opened; there was nothing in the cell besides a padded bench.

“Sit down, shut up,” the salarian shouted.

“Hey, you can’t just leave me in here,” Mordin protested as the officers began walking away. “I have the right to talk to my lawyer!”

The salarian officer glanced at his colleagues. “What? Did you hear him say anything?” The others shrugged and shook their heads. “Odd. Thought I heard something.”

Mordin watched them go with a scowl on his face; he waited until they were out of sight, sat down on the bench and leaned his back against the wall. There were, as far as he could tell, no cameras in the cell; regardless, he backed himself into the corner of the bench, and scratched at a spot on his back under his coat - while out of view of the cameras, he rubbed at the small scab there. Within seconds he had split the scab open, and with practiced ease rubbed around the scab a few times until there was a small amount of blood stuck to his fingers. From there, it was simple to draw the Eye of the Womb on the wall behind him, and Mordin inhaled sharply as his Sight expanded.

Mordin could see the cell around him - plain, unfurnished, barren - but he could see his surroundings with clarity. The cells across and beside him were empty, and several seething masses of heavyset blood pumped through the veins of a few individuals further down the corridor.

_Odd. Krogan, has to be - too big to be anything else. And the way I came, I saw a few turians and a salarian. Lots of empty space - not a normal prison? Drivers changed - maybe...somewhere secluded? Odd. Unlikely. Few places on the Citadel count as ‘secluded.’ Strange._

His newfound senses expanded all the way to the far end of the corridor and its cells; in the other direction, Mordin could sense a cluster of blood, hearts and veins, all standing close to one another.

_So...officers. Far right. Hmm. I won-_

Mordin flinched as a pair of new organs - both roughly salarian-sized - tore their way into his senses; they joined the cluster of what Mordin assumed were the officers - and Mordin could feel, sense, taste the anger radiating off both newcomers.

The Plain Doll hummed. _Ah. Rescuers, perhaps?_

_Best not get ahead of ourselves,_ Mordin cautioned.

Several more minutes passed; one of the newcomers left, while the officers escorted the other towards Mordin’s cell. He remained seated, brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to pick out the new arrival’s identity - and grinned as he recognized who the officers were leading towards him.

“Sehik!” Mordin exclaimed, getting to his feet as his newly-made colleague jogged over to the cell’s window.

“Fine mess you’ve gotten yourselves into,” Sehik replied, shaking his head as he shot a small smirk at Mordin. “Officers, I need time alone with my client,” he said flatly to the C-Sec officers accompanying him.

“Sir, that’s not advisable,” one of the turians protested. “I underst-”

“-you listen closely, alright? I don’t know who put you up to this, but let me tell you right now that you do not want piss me off,” Sehik snapped. “The Jatin Group has several deals with C-Sec. Cross me, and I’ll make sure those deals are off. Or maybe you’d like to explain to your superiors why the entire force will be paying market price on their incoming shield replacements, instead of fifty percent.”

The officers looked at one another.

“Or maybe I should talk to my colleagues in the Mechanics division?” Sehik continued. “It’d be a shame if ten minutes from now your superiors discovered that they’d be paying sixteen times as much in repair fees for every single vehicle in the force’s fleet. After all, C-Sec did sign an exclusive contr-”

“-fine, fine, you’ve made your point,” the turian spat. “You’ve got five minutes, tops.”

“I’m legally allowed to have as much damn time as I want,” Sehik replied.

“Just - just - go! And make sure you stop at the checkpoint on the way out,” the turian grumbled. “Civilians aren’t supposed to leave via the motor pool.”

Sehik folded his arms and stared until the officers were gone; once they were, he scanned a small keycard over the contact pad and joined Mordin inside the cell.

“So, uh. Hi there,” Mordin said sheepishly as he scratched at his chin.

“Kid, I thought I told you to stay out of trouble,” Sehik muttered. “How the hell did you end up in jail in under a day? That’s honestly impressive.”

Mordin frowned. “What, did they not tell you?”

“No, they didn’t,” Sehik replied with a scowl; he reached into his coat and pulled out a jamming-disc, which he tossed onto the bench. “Technically this cell isn’t supposed to be bugged, or watched. Bets on either?”

“I wouldn’t put money on it,” Mordin snorted.

“Same. Now - let’s hear it.”

Mordin paused, frowned, then sighed. “Look, uh, how familiar are you with Solus clan politics?”

“Not very,” Sehik answered, shrugging. “I know your clan’s in deep with the IS and STG, generally speaking. Technically that’s supposed to be classified, but anyone who’s spent time in the Group knows something’s up. Too many coincidences, too many redactions, you get the idea.”

“But you’re not familiar with anything else?” Mordin pressed.

“Nope. My clearance is pretty high, and even I’m not allowed to read most of the files that have your family name on it,” Sehik noted sourly. “So, what, this is clan stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Great. That’s just fantastic. Never had a problem with this before,” Sehik muttered. “So? Now what? If you’ve pissed off someone high up in your clan, well, I hate to break it to you, but I can’t stop them from fucking around with you. Probably.”

“I can handle that. Can you get me out of...whatever this is?” Mordin asked. “I walked into my new apartment, put my bags down, laid down for a nap and seconds later they barged in there and ‘found’ an unlocked case full of guns. Then they charged me with unlicensed firearms possession, gun-running, and resisting arrest.”

“Absolutely,” Sehik said, nodding.

“Will you do it, though?”

“Damn right I will.” Sehik grinned. “Clan politics, I can tolerate that up until it takes away one of my employees. You haven’t even started - you owe me plenty of hours. And besides, if your story’s true, there’ll be holes in the legality of holding you here - not to mention how garbage those cops are. I guarantee you they’ve screwed up with the paperwork somewhere along the line, if they’ve even done it at all. Cops on the payroll of others tend not to be the sort who do things properly.”

“Thanks, Sehik,” Mordin said, sighing with affected relief. “I appreciate it.”

“Don’t go thanking me yet,” Sehik protested. “You might still be spending time in here - technically, for charges of firearms smuggling or possession? That’s up to a week - maybe two, if they’re good - without formal charges.”

“Eh. I can handle two weeks in a cell,” Mordin said, shrugging. “That’ll be easy, no problem.”

“You sure? If you were a turian I’d buy that. Unlike the rest of the species out there, it’s not like you can really sleep most of the day,” Sehik noted.

“I’m serious - I’ll be fine. Had, uh, some insomnia problems as a kid - I’m used to it now.”

“Alright, alright - if you say so. Still doesn’t mean I won’t try and get you out of here faster,” Sehik said, nodding. “Okay. Look - if they come in here and try to ask you anything, just stay quiet. You do good on your RTI training?”

“Top of the class,” Mordin replied proudly.

“Fantastic. I’ll be back shortly to work on some stuff with you - I have to make a few calls. One second.” Sehik grabbed the jammer, tucked it back into his coat, then stood up and opened the security hatch; he was just walking beyond Mordin’s natural field of view via the window when he froze.

Mordin dived back into his Sight - and frowned. There were another two people standing with the officers at the security checkpoint - one nervous, the other one either angry or frustrated; both were roughly turian-sized, but Mordin couldn’t make out any further details. He walked over to the window and tapped on it to get Sehik’s attention.

“Hey, what’s going on out there? Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” Sehik said, not taking his eyes off the checkpoint. “There’s - there’s an asari? And it looks like another C-Sec officer - turian. Can’t make out the nameplate from here, but they’re a Captain. And they’re pissed.”

“Good pissed or bad pissed?”

Sehik shrugged. “I don’t know. Guy’s getting all fired up about - hold up, he’s coming. Asari too. Wait - and the officers. Stay cool.”

Mordin was about to return to the spot on the wall where he’d marked the Eye of the Womb, but there was no need; as he dimly heard the shouts of the entire group echo down the hall.

“-not your jurisdiction-”

“-better believe this is my Spirits-damned jurisdiction you upstart piece of-”

“-can’t just bring a civilian in-”

“-shit, and I’ll bring a damn civilian in, she’s well within her rights, maybe you’d know that-”

“-Captain, you’re way out of line-”

“-if any of you gave a single shit about actually reading up on the rules-”

“-the Executor’s going to be hearing about this-”

“-and don’t make me laugh, Pallin’s not going to take any of your shit-”

Sehik cleared his throat as the group arrived; Mordin could make out the nameplate of the new officer, one Captain Castis Vakarian - and the asari, Mordin realized, was the same one he’d met on the shuttle ride onto the Citadel.

“Uh, officers, is there a problem?” Sehik asked, expression quizzical.

“You’d better believe there’s a problem,” Castis spat. “Mordin Solus, your apartment’s been searched and the evidence looked at - the weapons in your apartment, as well as the locker they were found in, are in fact licensed to a mercenary who was previously living there. He’s been contacted, and was quick to explain that he was paid to leave them there.”

“Oh,” Mordin said, blinking. “Uh...that fast?”

“Yes, that fast,” Castis continued, glaring at the other officers. “Because the crime scene was never contained or cordoned. Thanks to a call from your neighbour - who found the guns just sitting in your apartment - this woman here was informed of the situation, then called C-Sec. Thankfully, she managed to get ahold of someone competent.”

“So my client is free to go, then?” Sehik asked.

“Partially. He’ll still be investigated, and may have to be brought in for questioning in the future - but he won’t be held without charges or a trial.” Castis, once again, turned to the other officers, his eyes bright with barely-contained fury. “Right?”

Most of the officers backed down, but several - the ones who’d greeted Mordin when he’d gotten out of the paddy wagon - only folded their arms and stared back.

“Excuse me.”

To Mordin’s - and everyone else’s - surprise, it was the asari.

“Let me get this straight,” she continued. “You’re holding my friend Mordin here, without charges, without a trial, without bail, on clearly fabricated evidence. Captain Vakarian here says that you’re already violated procedure. Let me add to that - do you have any idea who I am?”

The officers stared at her.

The asari grinned. “I don’t know, maybe you’d be more willing to adhere to protocol if, oh, say, Matriarch Benezia of the Asari Republics were to take a personal interest in your case?”

The officers looked at each other; Castis smirked, and Sehik’s face went through shock-surprise-calm in a span of microseconds.

“I, uh, we’ll be sure, to, uh, go over Mr. Solus’ case once again,” the salarian officer stammered.

“That’s good. Thank you,” the asari said with a thin smile. “I would really appreciate that.”

“Uh, sure. Yeah. Captain Vakarian can let you out,” the salarian replied; Mordin didn’t bother hiding his grin as the officers scurried out of sight.

“Well,” Sehik muttered as Castis opened the security hatch, “that makes my life a lot easier. You said you’re Matriarch Benezia’s daughter? That’d make you...Liara T’soni, correct?”

“That’s right,” Liara replied, visibly deflating. “Please don’t, ah, spread that around. I, um, try to avoid spreading that around. And putting on that show was harder than I’d like to admit - I’ve put a lot of work into, you know, not mentioning that fact.”

“No, no, I understand,” Sehik said, nodding.

“Same. Can’t be fun having someone that famous as your mother. Still,” Mordin mused, “how’d you know I was in here?”

“One of my friends gave me a call,” Liara explained. “Said some wiry-looking Salarian who just moved in got hit by the cops; I asked for details and, well, it sounded like you. So I called another C-Sec office, spoke to Captain Vakarian here, he did a little digging and, well, uh, the rest is history, I suppose.”

“In any case,” Castis continued, “you’ll need to find other living arrangements for the near future. Officers - trained officers - are still investigating your apartment, Mr. Solus.”

“That’s quite alright - the Jatin Group has more than enough resources at hand to take care of its employees,” Sehik explained. “And, of course, we’ll have to discuss some sort of gift to you, Miss T’Soni.”

“Oh, Goddess, uh, that won’t be necessary,” Liara protested. “I mean it - really!”

“I won’t - and my colleagues won’t - take no for an answer. But we can discuss that another time. If you’d show us the way out, Captain Vakarian?” Sehik asked.

“Through the motor pool,” the turian replied, gesturing to the door Mordin had come through.

Sehik raised a hand. “I thought that wasn’t for civilians.”

“Not if they’re under escort,” Castis muttered sourly as he led the group towards the motor pool entrance. “Come with me.”

The group followed him out into the lot and past the endless rows of C-Sec vehicles, arriving shortly after at the gate which separated the motor pool from the Citadel’s streets; Mordin didn’t recognize which district they were in, but he noted that there were several expensive-looking mansions and high-rises across the street from the C-Sec branch they were in.

“Street access is here,” Castis said, gesturing forward as he unlocked the gate. “Once you’re through, there’s no access back in. Mr. Solus, we’ll be in touch - same for you, Mr. Rentola.”

“Is, uh, everything okay for me?” Liara asked.

“Yes, it is. You’ll be fine - if there are any problems I’ll be sure to let you know,” Castis explained with a small smile. “If that’s all - I have work to do.”

“Of course. Thank you very much, Captain Vakarian.” Sehik smiled, nodded - Mordin did the same - and the three civilians exited onto the street and towards a waiting pair of black luxury aircars which each bore the Jatin Group’s spiral emblem on their hoods.

_Well well. We are free, and in less than a single day. A strange turn of events, one could say._

_I’m not complaining. I might be fine in prison, but it’s not like I’d prefer to be there. And who knows - this Liara might prove to make for a handy ally._

_Indeed. A woman, highly placed and - if I am assuming correctly - of the highest sort of birth? I can think of no better ally for a Herald._

“Miss T’Soni, thank you for your assistance,” Sehik said, turning to Liara. “If you won’t take a gift - well, we shall see about that. But at the very least one of our drivers can drop you off somewhere else.”

“Oh. Oh! That’d be great, thanks,” Liara said, blinking several times. “If it’s not a problem.”

“Of course not,” Sehik replied, nodding.

“Well if you’re not going to take a gift from my bosses, the least I can do is buy you a meal or something,” Mordin insisted. “I’m new to the Citadel, anyways - you can show me around, eh?”

“That seems a little more fair,” Liara admitted. “Here - contact info.” She extended her right arm and tapped her omnitool with Mordin’s. “I’ll see you around!” She smiled, then waved as she got into the farther aircar. Mordin and Sehik watched it pull into the airlane above, then got into their own vehicle; the second the doors were sealed both Sehik and the driver pulled jammers out of their jackets and activated them.

“Mordin, I have no idea how you made a friend out of Matriarch Benezia’s kid,” Sehik muttered, “but your new primary job is to be her best friend. I don’t care how you do it. STG’s been trying to think of a way to get into that circle without raising any fuss and you’ve just walked right into it.”

_Well that makes my life a little easier. Not like I wasn’t planning on doing it already._

“What, you think she won’t be suspicious?” Mordin scoffed aloud. “Things are already convenient as is.”

“That’s a you problem, Mordin. You got through training with awards out the ass? Time to prove you can handle yourself in the field,” Sehik pressed. “Technically your new assignment doesn’t start until I get word from the brass. Practically, you’d be stupid if you didn’t think the Group would pass up an opportunity like this.”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Mordin sighed. “So? I’m guessing I still keep at my analytics job as cover?”

“Yup.”

“And housing?”

“We’ll put you up in a hotel for now,” Sehik said, brow furrowing in thought. “You were already important, getting posted to the Citadel for your first offworld assignment - and with Liara in play, that shoves you at least a few rungs up the ladder; we’ll have to be extra sure that your next place doesn’t have any nasty surprises waiting. And I might have to clean house - see if anyone in my circle has ties to whatever shit’s going down in your clan.”

“I, uh - sorry about that. Didn’t mean to drag you into this,” Mordin muttered.

“Don’t be. Union above clan, that’s always been the rule. Whoever did this is overstepping their authority,” Sehik spat, “even if they themselves are the authority. Clan politics are fine. Clan politics that interfere with Group activity? No deal.”

“Fair enough,” Mordin said, turning out the window and smiling to himself. “Fair enough.”

 


	4. V2-B2: Youthful Service / Biocartography

  
**VOLUME TWO: YOUTHFUL SERVICE  
BOOK TWO: BIOCARTOGAPHY**

**The Citadel  
9th of Fire  
2661 Galactic Standard**

 

Mordin woke with a start, jerking upright in the armchair he’d been lounging in all evening; his omnitool was flashing with an incoming call, and he swiped at the window.

“Mr. Solus, I’m calling from the reception desk,” a smooth turian voice said. “You have a visitor downstairs by the name of Liara.”

“Oh - oh, yeah, I’m expecting her. Tell her I’ll be down in a second,” Mordin replied quickly.

“Very well, sir. Can I do anything else for you?”

“No, that’s all.” He disconnected the call, got up and checked his jacket; satisfied that his coat was fully-stocked, Mordin left his disgustingly lavish hotel room - one of only three on the floor - and took the elevator down to the lobby of the Jana-Myrave. The lobby, richly decorated with old-Thessia wood and veins of precious ores, was nearly empty save for the silent uniform-clad concierges who manned the various desks and stations scattered around the ground floor.

Liara was seated, alone and clearly uncomfortable, on an armchair which looked as expensive as it did old; she saw him and waved frantically.

“Hey, Liara,” Mordin said, walking over and clasping arms with the asari. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Liara whispered, “let’s just get out of here. Please.”

“What, you don’t like the decor?” Mordin said, grinning.

“Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how creepy this place is? It’s silent, Mordin. Nobody says anything,” Liara hissed, glancing at one of the attendants at the reception desk as the pair walked out of the hotel.“Nothing!”

“Yeah, I’m not enjoying this either,” Mordin muttered as they cleared the hotel grounds and made their way towards the nearest shuttle station. “Thought being stashed in one of the swankiest hotels on the Citadel would be cool. Nope. It’s just weird. Can’t wait to get moved into a new place.”

“At least your bosses are comping the hotel?” Liara pointed out. “I mean, it’s better than spending your own money.”

“Rich people problems,” Mordin snorted. “All these attendants and stuff just, you know. Hovering. I got home late one evening from work and they had a whole tray of food and stuff. In my room.”

“Eugh. Creepy.”

Mordin sighed. “Yeah. So what’s our plan? I don’t usually get time off - been busy with work every day since my one-day stint in prison.”

“I don’t know. You mentioned that you like history and the like?” Liara mused. “You checked out any of the museums in the Presidium?”

“Nope. Been meaning to, though.” Mordin checked his omnitool and flipped through a few map files he’d saved. “Can’t go wrong with the Institute of Citadel History? Sounds interesting to me.”

Liara sniffed slightly. “Ehh. Their stuff’s a little too general for my tastes, but don’t take my word for it - I’m a specialist.”

“Prothean stuff? Yeah, I'd call it specialist work. Still cool, though.”

“Yeah!” Liara - and her tone - brightened. “So many people just, well, think of the Protheans as something unimportant. Old history. You know, irrelevant.”

“Can’t really agree with that line of thinking. Everything’s relevant, in some way,” Mordin replied as the pair waited for a shuttle at a transit station. “You never know when some little thing might come in handy. There was this one time when some STG op - big high-profile assassination attempt on some salarian drug lord - went bad because some undercover agent didn’t know enough about the target’s love of ancient foods. Or something. Really niche stuff.”

“A darker example than I’d have used,” Liara said, chuckling, “but fitting in any case.”

“Besides, Prothean stuff should be important,” Mordin noted. “I don’t know. Weirds me out that people - academics - look at the Citadel and the Relays, see that they’re Prothean-made, shrug, and move on.”

“It’s why I got into the field,” Liara replied, nodding. “So much of our society is centered around, reliant on, even, these relays and the Citadel, and we know almost nothing about the Protheans. I know it strikes me as odd, even out of place, that there’s no record at all of what the average Prothean looked like, did on a daily basis.”

“Galaxy’s a big place, I guess?” Mordin shrugged as a private shuttle arrived; they got into the passenger compartment, and Mordin frowned as he stared out the window. “Without knowing where the Protheans based themselves, or of their point of origin or their biggest population centre - odds are low, I’d wager, of finding a big settlement.”

“Except for the Citadel?” LIara scoffed.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe the Citadel wasn’t important to them, not like it is to us?” Mordin looked back at Liara thoughtfully. “Nothing says that the Protheans - or we - have to use the Citadel as a population centre, right? What if this was more of a...meeting place, or something? A temple, or a shrine? A church? You don’t go to those places often, right?”

“I’m not terribly religious,” Liara noted with a smile. “I have considered the idea, though; perhaps it’s rather modernist to assume the Protheans were at all like us. But looking at - if you’ll excuse my trio-centric detour - the development of asari culture, and more generally salarian and turian culture as well, leads me to believe that it can’t be a coincidence that the Protheans constructed, relied on and left behind a transport network that leads to the Citadel, intending it to be used as some sort of sociopolitical gathering point.”

“Well, then we’d have to get into the whole reason as why they left the network behind,” Mordin replied, “and even get into why they’re not still around. You know? Why leave all this stuff around, but not any records, or more standing, long-lasting structures, or anything?”

“Million-credit question,” Liara sighed. “What I’d give for a working prothean recording device or the like.”

“I’ve always wondered about the Keepers, personally. There’s gotta be some sort of story there,” Mordin pointed out. “Semi-sentient maintenance crew for the Citadel? Who even thinks of something like that?”

“I find them creepy,” Liara said, shuddering. “Don’t you? They just, you know, scuttle around looking totally blank and dead. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand that the Protheans engineering them is interesting and advanced and whatnot, and I also get that they’re not technically sentient? Still scary, if you ask me. Why not just, you know, build some robots or something?”

“AI-fright? Not like we’re strangers to that,” Mordin said, shrugging.

“I - yeah, I suppose that makes sense. You run into them yet?”

“The Keepers?”

“Yeah.”

“Once,” Mordin said, thinking for a moment. “Was walking around Zakera a few days ago and there’d been some sort of pile-up; once C-Sec and the ambulances and whatnot cleared all the rubble away I watched the Keepers clean up for a bit. You know, repairing the station’s structures and stuff.”

“So you get what I mean when I say they’re scary?”

“Sort of? I tried to get a closer look, but a C-Sec officer told me not to get in the way. One of them did look at me - or through me - for a minute before moving on, though.” Mordin sighed. “Didn’t scare me, so much as annoy me. I wanted to see them do some repairs.”

“Gets boring after a while, trust me,” Liara snorted. “You watch them repair a wall a few times, it gets kind of rote. It’s not like they’re using magic or anything - it’s just fillers, self-repairing metals, et cetera.”

“Don’t you ever wonder, though? Where all that stuff comes from?”

“You don’t know?” Liara looked at Mordin quizically. “I mean, I understand you haven’t been here for long, but still.”

“No, no, I - look, I get that the Keepers have their bio-vats and waste treatment recycling things in the maintenance tunnels, sure,” Mordin said, shaking his head, “but that means, somewhere, they’ve got a network up and running, right? Computer of some sort? Maybe some sort of crazy bio-computer? You know what I’m trying to say, right?”

“I do,” Liara said.

“And that’s never piqued your interest?”

“It has, but examining the Keepers or interfering with their function is illegal. Very illegal,” Liara pointed out. “As in, expelled from the Citadel illegal.”

“Since when does something being illegal mean you can’t be curious about it?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Liara grumbled. “As much as I’d love to find this hypothetical control system or network or computer or whatever, I’d also rather not be the one who breaks the Citadel’s only repair crew.”

“We’re talking hypotheticals. Can’t let the law get in the way of a good thinking session.”

“You can, if the hypothetical result would be career-ending.”

“Joke’s on you, I just started my career.”

“No offense, Mordin,” Liara said, sighing, “but you’ll be working until you’re, what, forty? Forty-five? I’ve got a couple hundred years of academia, maybe more, to be worrying about.”

“Sounds like a you problem,” Mordin said, chuckling.  _Well, maybe a me problem, too. Maybe._

_Your friend shall live to be over a thousand,_  the Plain Doll said gently. _What harm can there be in you doing so too?_

“That’s just rude.”

“You started it,” Mordin replied with a grin.  _I know. I’m sure I’ll take the deal. Not just yet. Soon._

_Good, little one. I would hate to lose my conversations with you to a trifling thing like the passage of time._

Liara opened her mouth, then frowned. “Okay, you have me there.”

The ride lasted only a few moments longer; in less than a minute the shuttle touched down at a small parking pad tucked into the side of the Institute of Citadel History; compared to many of the other museums on the Citadel (and especially the Presidium) Mordin thought the building was rather understated. It was a simple affair, only three stories tall and essentially undecorated - in fact, save for a simple logo of the Citadel displayed above the front doors the museum more closely resembled a prefab apartment block.

“Well, here we are,” Liara said as she got out of the shuttle. “Not the fanciest or the most focused museum, but you can absolutely do a lot worse.”

“You agreed to come,” Mordin noted.

“I didn’t say the place was bad,” Liara protested. “I told you already, I’m a specialist. I’ve got my niche.”

“Do any museums have a Prothean focus? No offense,” Mordin replied, “but I didn’t think there’d be enough information to warrant one.”

Liara sighed as Mordin joined her. “Not a museum - just a small archival library. Barely bigger than my own place, and I’m not exactly living in luxury.”

“I’d still like to visit at some point,” Mordin said with a smile.

“That makes three potential visitors this month. Calea - she runs the place - is going to be panicking when she finds out,” Liara snorted.

“You, me, one other person? There’s no way only three people on the Citadel care about this sort of stuff,” Mordin said with a frown.

“There’s more than three. If I’m being generous, I think the library’s seen, uh, ten people? Maybe twelve? In the last two months, I might add,” Liara sighed. “We all know each other, too. It’s actually rather sad. Bunch of idiots opened up some ridiculous museum of mercenary, uh, stuff, a year ago, and they’ve seen more money and visitors than Caela could ever have dreamed of in the last decade.”

“People like guns and explosions, I guess.”

“Don’t remind me. I’ve been in several fights at excavation sites, and let me tell you, they’re overrated. Very overrated,” Liara muttered. “Did you know that being shot hurts? A lot?”

“I wasn’t aware,” Mordin said, grinning. “Thanks for the advice.”

The two entered the museum via its plain double-door entrance; the lobby was empty and unfurnished, save for a bored-looking turian receptionist who glanced up at the new arrivals for less than a second before returning to the terminal built into her desk.

“Uh, hi there,” Liara said as the two stopped in front of the desk. “Two tickets?”

“Mmkay,” the woman muttered, never looking away from some sort of show on her terminal’s display. “General pay pad’s on the exhibit entrance. No loitering. No recording if you see a sign that tells you not to. No access to the third floor. Repairs, I think.”

Mordin looked at Liara; she simply shrugged.

“How much is the entry fee?” Mordin asked.

“Eighteen, probably.”

“Probably?” Liara folded her arms and shot the receptionist a scowl. “How can you not know these things?”

“Look, I’m paid minimum wage for this and my hours are trash,” the turian said, glancing up at Liara. “And if you really care, the prices are over on the pay pad.”

“Goddess. Fine,” LIara spat. “We’ll let you get back to slacking off.”

“Thanks.”

Mordin dragged Liara away before she could say anything further, and he tapped her on the shoulder as they stopped in front of the pay-pad and gate which blocked them from entering the first floor of the museum proper.

“Look, lay off,” Mordin muttered with a poorly-hidden grin. “Not everyone cares as much about, ahem, the integrity and importance of history, as you do.”

“It’s not even that! It’s just - she gets paid to at least be nice-ish, doesn’t she?” Liara hissed. “Basic professionalism!”

“Have you ever worked a garbage job before?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, I didn’t have anything else,” Mordin said with a smirk. “Come on. Let’s go.”

The two looked at the small physical display placed on top of the pay-pad; the price was, in fact, only ten credits.

“See? Cheaper than the receptionist said. Nice treat, right?” Mordin mused.

“No! It’s terrible! What if someone comes in here with less than eighteen credits? They’d leave,” Liara grumbled, “and probably go complain on the net that museums are too expensive.”

“Who reviews museums online?”

“People who care about sharing their experiences?”

“About museums? Let me guess. You’re one of those people,” Mordin snorted.

“Yes, I am. Museums, and their experiences, are very imp-”

“-okay, yup, not listening,” Mordin interjected, waving his omnitool over the pad. “There. Paid for your ticket. Now you owe me a drink or something.”

“I hate you,” Liara muttered as she followed Mordin into the museum. “Did you know that?”

Much to Mordin’s - and Liara’s - chagrin, most of the museum’s first floor was little more than a list of important events in the Citadel’s history with attached holo displays and voiceovers. The second floor was only slightly better; there were a few physical copies of treaties and statues that Mordin could (if he was willing to stretch the definition) charitably call “relics,” but no originals and certainly not anything he would call museum-worthy.

“You know,” Mordin said as they walked past yet another replica - this one of a turian war memorial - and entered the main stairwell, “this place looked way nicer online.”

“Told you it wasn’t the nicest,” Liara replied. “I have to admit, even I’m surprised. Last time I was here - which, to be fair, was almost a decade ago - they had actual antiques and the like. Maybe they’re upstairs?”

Mordin glanced up the stairwell; it was blocked only by a holo-ticker which read ‘Repairs - No Entry.’

“We could just go up there,” Mordin said with a shrug. “Anyone asks, I can say that I was annoyed by how garbage the rest of the experience was.”

“That’s illegal,” Liara replied. “I think it is, anyway.”

“I bet we could still get in. Maybe we could go and ask the receptionist? I bet if we complain enough she’ll give us a non-answer, which legally speaking is probably enough to get us out of any serious trouble,” Mordin offered.

“That’s - huh.”

“Right?”

“You know,” Liara said, “sometimes I forget you work for a big company. Even though we’ve only met, like, four times. You said you work as a receptionist?”

“Yup. Trust me, I deal with visitors and trespassing laws all the time. You wouldn’t believe how often people try and sneak into our employee entertainment floor,” Mordin said, chuckling. “I mean, they are nice.”

“Maybe I should get out of academia. Employee entertainment. I didn’t even know that was a thing,” Liara muttered. “So? We both going to yell at the woman downstairs?”

Mordin shook his head. “Nah. I gotta use the bathroom. Besides, I’ve got too much sympathy for the wage-slaves - no offense, but you can do the whole ‘let me speak to your manager’ thing way better.”

“I take offense to that,” Liara replied.

“It’s true, though.”

“I didn’t say I was disagreeing - but fine. You go take care of business and I’ll go secure us our VIP pass.”

Mordin watched Liara walk down the stairwell, waiting until he could hear Liara passing through the main gates; with practiced ease, he pulled a spray-vial of his blood out of his coat, flashed a tiny runic stencil with his omnitool and marked the wall with an Eye of the Womb before destroying the stencil, leaving behind a small pile of dust.

For several moments, nothing happened; Mordin was about to banish the rune when he frowned - a soft, pulsating ripple of bone and skin which scurried up his spine.

_Ah. You sense something, little one?_

_Yeah. The itch. It’s back, I think_ , Mordin thought as he furrowed his brow.  _What is this, the sixth? Seventh time, now? The Eyes keep feeling the itch - can’t figure out what triggers it, though._

_Your previous attempts to discern the cause of this discomfort may not have been fruitful, but surely that is no reason to give up._

_I’m not giving up - whether or not Liara gets permission, I want up top. And even if there’s nothing eldritch, someone’s got to have info on the Protheans that I can’t find elsewhere._

Hearing footsteps echo up the stairwell, Mordin quickly banished the rune with a press of his thumb; Liara returned with a smile on her face.

“So? How’d it go?”

Liara grinned. “She said, and I quote, ‘whatever, if you two hurt yourselves that’s your fault,’ which if you ask me sounds like permission.”

“Good enough for me,” Mordin chuckled. “Lead the way!”

Together, the pair passed through the ticker - which flashed red as they walked up the stairs - and entered into a nearly-empty room, devoid of any sort of displays or exhibits. Various dividing walls and light fixtures were in states of half-completed construction, and several walls at the far end of the floor were actually exposed to open air; two Keepers were busy repairing what looked like wiring or plumbing tubes attached to the Citadel itself.

“This,” Liara grumbled, “might be the biggest disappointment in my life. I could have gotten myself a snack for ten credits, and I’d probably have enjoyed it more. They’re not even using this floor for storage?”

“I guess not?” Mordin sighed. “I thought you said they had some cool stuff here. Maybe they sold it all? Or tucked it into a warehouse?”  _I was kind of hoping there’d be something illuminating here, he thought sourly._

_This station is large, and its layout labyrinthine,_  the Plain Doll consoled.  _Perhaps, somewhere beyond that wall which this station’s servants are repairing, is the source of your discomfort. Or perhaps not. I am ill-inclined to call myself anything but ignorant on this matter._

One of the Keepers turned to look at the newcomers, before returning to its work.

“Pfft. Even the Keepers are bored out of their minds,” Liara muttered.

 

_One of the Keepers had turned to look at the newcomers, before returning to its work._

_One of the Keepers had turned to Look at Mordin, before returning to its work._

_One of the Keepers had Turned to Look at Mordin, its Work Unfinished, great Trials ahead, with much to pre-_

 

“-Mordin? Hello? You there?”

“What?” Mordin blinked, and shook his head. “Uh, sorry. What did you say?”

Liara stared at Mordin, frowning. “You sort of zoned out there for a second. I was just saying that the Keeper-”  
 _  
-Keeper, Keeper, K-_

_-focus, damn it-_

“-was bored out of its mind?” Liara pat Mordin’s shoulder. “You look kind of woozy, actually - are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Mordin replied, rubbing at his face. “Don’t know what happened there. Maybe the hotel’s fancy-pants breakfast isn’t sitting so well.”

“I thought you went to the bathroom already,” Liara said, smirking.

“Hey, that’s just unnecessary,” Mordin protested. “But seriously, this is stupid. Let’s go, I don’t know, do something that doesn’t involve wasting our money?”

“Ten credits,” Liara grumbled as the two returned to the stairwell and began making their way downstairs. “Do you know how much stuff you can do for ten credits on the Citadel? Stuff that isn’t overpriced and pointless? I could have told you more about the Citadel than this museum. Where did they put all their good exhibits, anyway?”

“We’re leaving a bad review?”

“You’d better believe it.”

 Ultimately Mordin spent another hour or so with Liara; they ate lunch at a small cafe that Liara regularly spent time studying in, then went their separate ways. While Liara had work to do, Mordin found himself with the rest of the day free, and nothing to do.

_Nothing to do except figure out what in the hells is up with the Keepers,_  Mordin thought sourly as he unlocked the door to his hotel room; once inside, he waited for the door to close behind him, opened the safe tucked into the stand beside his bed and placed his emptied blood-vial into the small tray within before replacing it with a full vial. Carefully hanging his coat on the nearby rack, he flopped onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, brow furrowed in concerned thought.

_So. Keepers. Something’s up with them, for sure. But you said you didn’t really smell anything off about them, right?_

The Plain Doll made a sort of humming noise before responding.  _Yes. No scent of the Great sits upon these Keepers - and yet it is plainly obvious that the Blood and your Eyes - and Hers, for that matter - dislike their presence, or are at the very least disturbed by them. I do wonder what your best course of action ought to be._

_I mean, I could just wander around the Citadel and look for another Keeper? Not sure what I’d do then, though. Not like I can wander up to one and steal it. Or cut it open. Or Claim it. Not publicly, anyway._

_Alas, you lack the Blood necessary to conceal your presence. Had you slain enemies and taken their Blood - or imbibed more of it somehow - you could impart upon yourself the cloak of the vanished, the body of the invisible. But we are not at that point - and so I am unable to assist you, at least concretely._

_Hrm. I suppose I could, I don’t know, try and mark the maintenance tunnels with Eyes from Her Womb? Illegal to be in the tunnels, sure, but I don’t think people patrol down there._

_Mmm. Perhaps it would be in our best interest to seek the home of these Keepers. They have souls, weight, blood, presence - indeed, they may not be thinking creatures, not in the grandest sense, but they are flesh, of a sort. Somewhere aboard this great station, there must be a place from which they are birthed or constructed; there must be a place where they are fed and restored._

_Easier said than done,_  Mordin muttered mentally.  _Citadel’s huge. Really huge. People have died trying to explore the tunnels._

_The mere title of ‘person’ ill describes the gravity of power you wield, little one._

_I suppose? I have appearances to keep, though, Plain Doll. A job, even. Spending a few days - or more - in the tunnels? That’s not going to work._

_Ah. Yes. Well, we are not short for time, in any case. Your investigation need not be solved overnight._

_Doesn’t need to be, sure. But it’s going to bother me, not know- wait. I can inscribe Her Eyes on living creatures, right?_

_Yes, you may. I will advise against doing so on any creature you wish to remain sane, however; to bear Her mark, especially one whose power stems from Her Womb, carries a burden befitting only those who have the Sight and the Blood._

_But the Keepers aren’t totally sentient, right?_ Mordin leapt off his bed and snatched his coat off its rack.  _Perfect. Perfect! This should work. I hope._

_So you have decided to mark one of these Keepers with Her Eyes? I warn you, little one, that if these creatures have caused you discomfort already, they may be cognizant of Greater beings. Can you say that you will be prepared for any consequences that may befall you if the Keepers are ill-inclined to your actions? And,_  the Plain Doll cautioned, _what of your friends and fellow residents of the Citadel? What fate shall befall them if the Keepers - and whatever master controls them - finds your actions to be in poor taste?_

Mordin paused, halfway to the door of his room. _I - damn. Didn’t even consider that. Great. Back to square one._

_I did not say that you should not proceed with your current course of action, little one,_  the Plain Doll pointed out.  _Merely that you should be prepared for all outcomes._

Sinking into the armchair next to the room’s desk, Mordin stared into the mirror mounted on the wall, scowling.

_I’m not prepared for all outcomes. Not by a long shot. A non-zero chance that I’d hurt the people on the Citadel means this is a no-go. Killing people here, or hurting them, or, I don’t know, tripping some alarm - that’d ruin my chance at a proper introduction. What if the Citadel’s designed to alert people about the Great Ones? Give them some sort of warning? I don't need that._

_Surely you cannot deny, however, that there is just as much chance that the Citadel was placed here for the benefit of those touched by Greatness? If we are to speak of hypotheticals, free from evidence and borne solely upon conjecture, we might lose ourselves to an eternal pondering of the matter, no?_

_So we gather more evidence? It’s already suspicious enough that the Keepers stare at me. Don’t want anyone picking up on that - way too many questions there. Could I...I don’t know...affix the rune to a drone? Fly it around the tunnels, see if that draws any attention?_

_It seems as good a plan as any,_  the Plain Doll mused.  _You have already been using the rune around the Citadel, and that has not alarmed the Keepers, as far as we are aware. And in blessing one of your mechanical eyes, you would not be threatening the Keepers themselves with a Claiming, no?_

Mordin snorted. _Maybe I shouldn’t rush into this?_

_It is up to you, little one. Time is no object for you - but I must agree with you. Should you continue to draw the attention of the Keepers it is merely a matter of when, not if, someone realizes that the stewards of the Citadel have an unnatural affinity for your presence._

_Mmm. Liara already got a little close for comfort earlier. And I don’t like how...affected I was by the Keepers. Haven’t lost control of my mind like that for years._

_I am afraid that I cannot say whether that was an expression of the power which commands the Keepers, or simply a reaction by your body to touching the eldritch in a manner you are unused to._

_Bottom line’s the same. Gotta get to the bottom of this fast._

Mordin stared into the mirror for several minutes, eyes searching his own face, circling over and over, until he sighed and rubbed at his forehead.

_Okay. Drone time. Let’s do that._

Pulling the small suitcase which contained the entirety of his possessions out from under the bed, Mordin popped it open, removed several neatly-folded sets of businesswear, set them aside and grabbed the now-visible charging case. Inside was a small Jatin Group-branded drone, roughly the size of an asari fist in its compacted, spherical form; Mordin pulled the extension latch, and the top half of the sphere unfolded into a sleek set of suspension modules attached to the drone’s still-spherical underbelly via a set of flexible arms. Carrying the drone to the bathroom, Mordin set the machine belly-up in the sink, then emptied a vial of his blood onto the drone before drawing the Eye of the Womb. The blood, set into the runic form, whined slightly as it rippled and bubbled - then faded into the body of the machine, leaving only a faint impression of the rune behind.

A quick check of his mind and his Eyes revealed a shrinking gap between his perception and that of the space around the drone; it wasn’t clarity of the sort he’d gained when he’d tested the power and control on his Claim on dead animals, but despite the blurriness of thought and perception Mordin could sense himself - and the bathroom - around the drone, even when he stepped outside the bathroom.

_Well, that works,_  Mordin thought as he packed the drone back into its case and re-checked his coat.  _Step two: throw this thing into a maintenance tunnel? Hope there’s one nearby._

A quick check of his omnitool showed that, thankfully, there was a maintenance tunnel less than a five minute walk away, tucked behind one of the buildings which served as a storage facility for the Jana-Myrave; Mordin quickly made his way out onto the streets, doing his best to ignore the ever-silent employees who stood in the lobby of the hotel. Ducking through the back alleys behind the hotel, Mordin found his point of interest without trouble - a rather large hole, wide enough to maybe fit two or three Keepers standing side by side, tucked behind a row of garbage compactors. Without ceremony, Mordin opened the drone case, swipe his omnitool over the drone, and threw the machine into the opening-

-and was nearly bowled over as a Keeper burst out of the tunnel, leaping into the air and snatching the drone with an outstretched arm.

Mordin blinked.

_What._

The Keeper stared at him.

Mordin stared back, mouth open, and he watched as the Keeper spun around in place several times.

_Okay, uh, this is not what I was expecting._

_I, too, am thoroughly confused. Perhaps it means to communicate with us?_

Mordin looked around the alley; there were no cameras, and no pedestrians in sight, and so Mordin inched towards the Keeper.

The insectoid creature ceased its spinning, then stared at Mordin with eyes that suddenly lacked the usual blank emptiness-

 

_**YOU FOLLOW** _

 

-Mordin nearly jumped as the new voice tore through his mind with thunderous clarity; it was vaguely male, Mordin thought, and distressingly authoritative.

It reminded him of Aenon.

The same sort of voice his uncle would use when he was disappointed - not mad, never mad - with Mordin.

_Hello?_ Mordin reached out with his mind, extending feelers towards the rune on his drone - and did his best not to recoil at the sensation of thinking, feeling, touching a fleshy barricade or wall.

 

**_GOOD. YES FOLLOW._ **

 

Without any warning the Keeper scurried into the tunnel and out of sight; Mordin inhaled, exhaled, then chased after the creature.

_Plain Doll? Explanations? Please?_  Mordin pleaded as he ran into the dimly-lit corridors of the Citadel’s maintenance tunnels; the Keeper somehow always stayed just out of reach, his rune-etched drone firmly clutched in its grasp.

_I have none for you, little one. Be brave, be bold, and know that you are the Herald of Heralds, the Plain Doll reassured him. So long as you trust in your power and station - and me, and your Great Mother - you can know that nothing will ever truly harm you._

_Still don’t like this. Hey! Keeper! Give me my damn drone back,_  Mordin shouted into the space beyond his own mind.

 

**_FLYING-DEVICE RETURN IF FOLLOW. GOOD. YES FOLLOW._ **

_I am following!_

_**FOLLOW SLOW. NO SLOW. FOLLOW FAST. WE WAIT. AWAIT YOU, MANY EONS. NO MORE. GOOD. YES FOLLOW.** _

_What? You - you were waiting for me? Can you slow down?_

_**NO SLOW. FOLLOW FAST. RETURN. SPEAK TO HOME. HOME WAITS. NO WAIT. NO MORE. FOLLOW.** _

_And how in the hells did that thing just break into my mind?_ Mordin hissed as he continued to give chase.  _I thought we had a private thing going, Plain Doll._

_As did I. I surmise that the Keeper - at least, the one we are speaking with,_  the Plain Doll mused,  _is empowered or touched by the eldritch in some way. Worry not - I have ensured our privacy, now that I am expecting the presence of other creatures who bear Power of the mental plane. My apologies, little one. I was unprepared - it shall not happen again._

_Thanks. I’d rather not have anyone poking around in my head, not without permission._

_You may also rest assured that if anyone - or anything - tries to do so,_  the Plain Doll added with what Mordin swore was something approaching anger,  _they shall see consequence the likes of which have never been conceived. Let it be said that, as a doll for whom emotion was supposedly impossible, the seas of my wrath are as cold as they are infinite._

_That,_  Mordin thought meekly,  _is the scariest thing I’ve heard in my life._

_I do not mean to frighten. I speak only truth. You are my brave little Herald. You are loved. None shall deny it._

Mordin came to a halt moments later as he realized the Keeper had led him into a dead end; he was standing before some sort of chest-high tube which protruded out of the floor, barely visible in the dim red lighting of the tunnels.

**_HOME BELOW. FOLLOW. GO HOME. GOOD. YES HOME._ **

The Keeper tossed his drone into the tube, then stared at Mordin, its eyes unblinking and unmoving.

_Hello? Keeper? You there?_

There was no response; Mordin clambered up the side of the tube and stared down it.

Its depths seemed endless - and a part of him, just beyond the space of his mind and hanging just beyond his awareness, was a knowledge that, yes, the fall was indeed a steep one.

Unnaturally steep.

Lethally steep.

_Okay. Okay - I need tools. More gels, more blood - rappelling gear?  
_  
Mordin stepped back from the tube, turned around - and paused as he realized that, in the split seconds he'd spent examining the tube, nearly a dozen Keepers had swarmed into the area, blocking his way out.

**_NO GO. HOME. GO HOME. OUR HOME. YES HOME. HOME. HOME. HOME. HOME-  
_**  
 _Okay, okay!_  Mordin stepped back and looked towards the tube, brow furrowed and blood churning; the Keepers' endless chanting ceased, and Mordin sighed.

_Plain Doll? How far can I fall without dying?_

_Presently you are no mere mortal - but I caution you from attempting anything you would not do without your blessings, as you are now. Of course, I shall prevent any lasting, physical death if you do not wish it - but if you wish to continue this venture in a timely fashion I cannot recommend leaping headfirst into this opening without some sort of plan._

Mordin stared at the empty-eyed Keeper, then back down the tube.

_Okay. Okay. If - can you make me - make me sturdier?_

_Without the gift of agelessness?_

_Y-yes._

_I cannot do that. We have discussed as much. You lack the Blood._

_But you can make me...ageless. Immortal. And that will let me survive a fall?_

_If I end your aging, little one, that does not mean you will be impossible to wound physically. But neither shall you be hindered by mere wounds - not for long. Your gravity and weight shall be felt and known by all; unlike now, you will not be cursed to the passing of time when your injuries are grave._

Mordin leaned against the tube.

Simply breathed for several moments. Minutes. Perhaps longer.

_You still fear the infinite?_

_I - maybe - yes. I do. You wouldn’t understand, not truly. What it’s like to be mortal. To know you’ll die._

_That is correct, little one. I do not. But I had always thought it such that the mortal would always seek the gift of the immortal. You have never spoken at length on your fear of such a thing._

_Can you imagine it?_  Mordin asked.  _Outliving all those around you?_

_Yes._ There was weight in her words, Mordin felt. _I do. I have felt no grief from it. Life is to be celebrated, not mourned. I revel in the endless, timeless existence that is mine. I treasure it. To be mortal would be to spurn the countless persons I know and have known and will know._

Mordin thought.

About Aenon, and Gajai, and all those he’d come to know in his life.

About Igin.

About himself.

_Okay. I - I’m ready. Do it._

_It is done._

Mordin blinked, looking at himself.  _What? That’s it?_

_Yes, little one,_  the Plain Doll said, shrugging visibly in the corner of his sight.  _I told you - to be a Herald is to be gifted and touched. From the day that your body accepted the Eyes and the Blood, I have held the gift of timeless being away from you. It was not something to be granted; I have stood between the gift and your presence. To give it to you was merely a matter of letting you have what was always yours._

_I don’t feel any different_ , Mordin thought uneasily.

_But of course. You are as you should be, little one. You are whole. But we have dallied for long enough; do you not have a drone to recover, and a mystery to pursue?_

_I - yeah. Yeah. That’s right. Okay._ Mordin stood upright, stood tall, and breathed in deeply.

“Here we go,” he muttered, as he closed his eyes and leapt feet-first into the tube.

 

  
Mordin shuddered as he descended into the depths of the Citadel, the walls of the cramped tube speeding by him faster and faster. Within seconds the illumination of the overhead lights was gone, and the only light by which Mordin could judge his speed came from his omnitool; the air, too, was beginning to warm, shifting from the Citadel’s standard climate-controlled coolness to a hot, sticky humidity that resembled boiling meat.

_How much is this going to hurt? Been falling for closer to a minute,_  Mordin thought sourly.  
 _  
The pain will be the same, little one - whether we fall ten stories, or ten thousand,_  the Plain Doll said gently.  _In time, even pain - the sort that cripples others - will be akin to a mere bruise or bump._

_Doesn’t help me now,_  Mordin thought as he glanced up, then down, unable to estimate where he was; his omnitool was showing no signals, and his STG-provided map of the Citadel could only place his rough location within the tunnels. As the length of the fall approached two, three, then four minutes, the fear in Mordin’s stomach was replaced first by frustration - and then boredom.

_Okay. This is stupid. I can’t even sense how far the drone is and we’ve been falling for - what? Six minutes now? Can’t be right. What if we’re, I don’t know, not falling?_

_Ah. A distortion of space? That seems a more likely culprit to me than a vertical tube which spans six continuous minutes of falling,_  the Plain Doll mused.

_Alright. Testing. Let’s see._  Mordin carefully withdrew a vial of his blood from his coat and sprayed it on the walls before him; it left a long, streaking line which quickly stretched up and out of sight. Less than ten seconds later, the blood-markings came back into view, just as quickly passing by once again.

_So that settles it,_  Mordin sighed.  _Loop. Great. I’m stuck in a loop, and I don’t have the Blood to dispel this sort of, what were they? Hexes?_

The Plain Doll made a sort of grumbling noise.  _Correct, in theory. Alas, I sense no usage of hex magic here - at least not any kind I am familiar with - and even if that is the case, I could not guarantee that our own curse-breakers would be effective._

_Wonderful. So...I guess I just wait? I’m immortal now, right? I don’t have to eat, do I?_

_No, you do not,_ the Plain Doll replied, _but that does not mean things like hunger and thirst no longer apply to you simply because your body and mind have become immovable points in the grand scheme of time. So, in theory, if you were to fall, forever, in this cursed tube, you would never perish even in the face of a parched throat and howling stomach._

_That’s great,_  Mordin groaned. _Absolutely fantastic._

_I did not mean to invoke fear or frustration. If we are dealing with something that has been touched by Greatness, I would recommend patience. Even I, who has been your companion and seen things from your mortal view for these many years, must remember that time as you perceive it is vastly different._

_So I’m stuck in a waiting room because the Keepers, or whatever controls them, doesn’t get how time works._

_Perhaps. It is only a theory. I have no evidence to support my claim - merely a feeling._

_At this right I might as well try and see if I can’t stay asleep while falling,_  Mordin grumbled.  _At least in the Dream I can hone my skills, read some books, do anything besides just fall down this stupid hole._

_Once again, I shall preach the virtues of patience, little one. The Keepers directed you here; the tube is wide enough to allow their passage. Perhaps there is a security system here which is unsure of how to deal with you; assuming that this passage is some sort of transit method, I cannot imagine it - the tunnel - has seen anything besides the Keepers and their refuse in many upon many years. Certainly not a Herald._

_Still rude to make me get into this thing._

_Somehow_ , the Plain Doll replied, chuckling slightly,  _I do not think the Keepers are concerned with etiquette._

Mordin tried to think of something witty to say, but couldn’t, and so instead he simply closed his eyes and did his best to be patient. He was rewarded some time later with a change in surroundings; at some point, the blood he’d marked on the wall was no longer looping past him, and he dropped into a section of still-vertical tunnel which was brightly lit and decorated with some sort of spiraling pattern.

_Here we go. Brace for impact?_

_There is nothing to fear. Pain of the body is temporary, little one. Nothing can truly harm you while you sit in my and Her embrace._

_Still not looking forward to pasting myself into the ground, Mordin muttered as anxiety began to slowly worm its way back into his stomach. Need to start carrying some sort of parachute around, at this ra_ \- ah!

Mordin jerked slightly as he was unceremoniously dumped onto solid ground - not gently, but certainly not at the terminal velocity he was expecting; whatever metal flooring he’d landed on pulsated with a soft, gentle warmth which sent his spine into a frenzy of rippling unease. The chamber he’d been deposited in was an empty, silver-metal room easily the rival of any gymnasium or sports stadium, devoid of details save for a plain semi-circular door at the far end of the hall.

“Hello?” Mordin got to his feet, took a steadying breath and listened as his voice echoed through the cavernous room. “Anyone home?”

He listened for another moment; there was nothing save the tinny echo of his own voice.  
 _  
So...door. Note to self: get that firearms permit and start carrying._

_If you believe the Keepers serve something eldritch, little one, I think you will find that mere firearms shall not entirely replace the utility and weight of a hunter’s blade, or the like._

_Look,_ Mordin thought as he slowly and cautiously approached the door,  _I can fit a subcompact into my jacket. Rocket-propelled lance? Not so much._

_True enough,_  the Plain Doll admitted with obvious distaste.  _Your dislike of the tools described in the study is plain for me to see, but I am certain that they shall come to your aid in the future._

_You putting money on that?_

_I have no need of currency. After all, I am correct, and know that I am correct. A wager would be superfluous._

Mordin snorted as he stopped in front of the door, a hand outstretched as he laid hands upon it.  _Some might call that arrogant._

_I deny any such accusations._

_But of course. You’re too nice for that,_ Mordin thought in reply. The door made no movements at Mordin’s touch, and a quick scan of his omnitool revealed no commands tied to it; frowning, Mordin pulled one of his blood-vials from his coat and sprayed the door. The second Mordin’s green blood impacted the surface of the door, the entire chamber lit up, illuminated by unseen lights of green and white - and the door slid down into the floor.

A long hall, like the throne room of an ancient salarian empress, stood before him: unfurnished, made of the same silver metal from the chamber he was standing in, but this hall bore some sort of raised obelisk-like protrusion at the far end - and there were a dozen Keepers lined up on each side of the central path to the obelisk, their legs tangled as they knelt with their heads down and eyes closed.

“Hello?” _Hello?_  Mordin called out in both mind and voice, but the Keepers were blank; Mordin could feel nothing from them. Blood churning and his Eyes unblinking, Mordin took slow, tentative steps into this new room, following the path to the obelisk in silence. Mere steps away from the silver spire, Mordin was about to touch it when the obelisk lit up with a spiraling green-white light-

-and, from its tip, projected a massive hologram of an green-white armoured figure which towered over Mordin; its features were hidden beneath its helmet and hardsuit, the styling and make of which were unfamiliar, though Mordin could make out what might have been an angular head and an asari-like physique beneath.

“Ah, at last,” the figure boomed in the same voice as the Keepers. “It has taken long enough! Welcome, chosen tribal of the shrava-tik. It is good to see that the Keep has not been entirely overrun by heathens and infidels.”

Mordin knelt, mind racing in abject confusion even as he looked up at the construct. “Ah, greetings. I answered the summons of the Keepers, but must admit that I am, ah, at a disadvantage in our conversation,” he said in the best approximation he could make of Aenon’s “all-business” tone. “How may I refer to you?”

“Oh, this is simply wonderful - a tribal who does not turn away from the Call and has manners? I am delighted at this turn of events,” the construct said, nodding. “You shall call me Vigilant, for I am the Steward of the Keep. And you, tribal? What am I to call you?”

Mordin got to his feet and stared Vigilant down, even as he had to crane his head back to do so. “I am Mordin Solus, Herald of the Moonlit Shepherdess.”

“Moonlit - pardon? My apologies,” Vigilant scoffed, “but you will have to dispense with your theatrics. I am unfamiliar with whatever primitive so-called goddess you claim to be the Herald of.”

**_Apologies, little one. I will not suffer such denigration._ **

_Wait, wha-_

Mordin felt his jaw open, his muscles clench and tighten - and he was, somehow, staring out of his on eyes as little more than a passive observer; his voice was not his own, but that of the Plain Doll’s, soft and gentle and firm and furious.

“You who are called Vigilant, I shall not hear another insult from your tongue,” the Doll said coolly. “You shall not insult the Herald of a foreign power, nor shall you insult the Gentle Mother and the Lunar Womb.”

“Oh? And why should I listen to you, Observer?” Vigilant shook his head. “Surely you cannot expect me to listen to your puppet when he cannot speak for himself, let alone your so-called power.”

“Let this be your final warning - I will not suffer your impropriety again,” the Doll warned. “

Vigilant waved a gauntlet-clad hand. “Tribal, I am disappointed. I was glad to see a faithful servant of the Theocracy finally answer my summons - but whatever goodwill I may have had toward your arrival fades quickly.”

Mordin twitched; the Doll’s anger and frustration boiled within him, and his entire body seemed ready to buckle from the newfound stress.

**_Little one. Will you stand idly by and allow this - this - this thing, to insult your patron? Will you accept these insults, this arrogance? You must not,_**  the Doll roared within his head.  ** _You can do no such thing._**

_Please. Give me some credit. That’s not happening._

_Take my hand, then, little one. Let none gaze upon your purpose and see anything but the majesty and gravity you must be afforded. Show him. Let the Sight guide your hands and the Blood inform your purpose._

Mordin crumpled beneath the sudden weight upon him; his eyes and his Eyes opened, wide, then further beyond even that. There was no pain, not even as his body forced more and more Blood out of his chest; his muscles strained, veins vibrating as every eye and every Eye in his head split and cracked, pupils undergoing exponential, glorious, ecstatic mitosis.

When Mordin gazed upon Vigilant once more, the projection no longer towered above him: in its place was a simple, small, pathetic creature, nothing more than the mental template of a long-dead wretch.

“You,” Mordin intoned, his voice echoing in triplicate, spine sprouting new branches to force his body ramrod straight and upright, “will be silent.”

“Tribal, please. Do not insult me or my station,” Vigilant replied, shaking its head - and yet its voice no longer held the majesty and weight it once had. “Just because you have mastered the art of throwing your voice, does not mean you speak with any authority.”

“I did not suggest your silence. I demanded it,” Mordin spat - and as he spoke, he drew every blood-vial from his coat and dashed them upon the floor. The gap between the Blood on the floor and the Blood within him vanished before the vials had even shattered; bloodcraft that had, up until now, been more theory than anything, came as easily to him as breathing.

From there it was simple to shape the Blood, and to let it shape him; mere twitches of his fingers drew the green fluid up and into the air. Unconscious thought gave the Blood shape, and moments later an Eye of the Womb hung suspended before Mordin, shining so brightly that Mordin might have been blinded, if his eyes were mundane and mortal.

“This is the symbol of my patron,” Mordin declared. “You will look upon it, know Her weight, understand Her presence, and afford Her the dignity and respect that is Hers alone.”

Vigilant’s body ceased all movement for several seconds; he craned his head forward, examining the rune with what might have been - what was - interest.

“Oh. Oh, oh, I see, I do see indeed,” Vigilant muttered, shaking his head. “I - I am so sorry. It has been eons since I have had a true Herald enter the Keep that I fear I may have forgotten my own manners, and you must understand, when a mere Tribal speaks-”

“-I am no mere ‘tribal,’” Mordin interjected. “I am salarian. You will refer to me as such.”

Vigilant nodded slowly. “Ah. Yes. Of course. I - I forgot myself - the time of the Prothean Theocracy is past. I can understand why you might think it rude for me to speak of you in the manner I am - was - accustomed. Very well.” Vigilant’s hologram flickered, and his helmet dissipated, revealing a flat-crested head, angular in shape, bearing four double-pupil eyes and an asari-like mouth. “Let us carry out our introductions once more, from one equal to another. As the Herald of a foreign power, you are accorded the right of my welcome. Please, speak - and leave nothing which you desire out of your next words.”

_Yes. You are Her Herald. Regal is your station and lofty is your person. You already know what you must do._

_Yes. Yes. I know. I have always known._

In some dim, half-remembered and half-asleep part of his mind, Mordin recalled the sort of speeches he’d heard the highest of the salarian dynasts give.

“I am Sur'Kesh Baelani Talat Saerik Solus Mordin, son of Solus Mohip and son-adopted of Solus Aenon. You shall know that I am the Herald of the Moonlit Shepherdess, who is known by many names, and that Her Regent, the Plain Doll, speaks with me.”

Vigilant bowed his head, placing his right arm across his chest diagonally and resting his left arm behind his back. “I am Vigilant, who is the Template born of the man once named Ksad Ishan; I am the Vigilant Eternal who watches over the Keep, servant-eternal of the Prothean Theocracy. Hail, and well met.”

_Template? Prothean Theocracy? The Keep?_  His mind finally clear enough to think on his own, Mordin suppressed a scowl as he met Vigilant’s level gaze. “Vigilant, you’ll have to clarify things for me. The way you speak of things - your Theocracy, what you call the Keep, and more - is foreign to me.”

“Odd,” Vigilant said, blinking with surprise. “I presume, then, that you and the others who were once Tribals, have lost the knowledge we left behind?”

“I don’t know enough to agree,” Mordin answered. “There are few Prothean ruins left to search, and few surviving records of your people and their society. A, ah, colleague of mine has dedicated her life to the study of your people, Vigilant, and the sum of that pursuit’s research can barely fill the smallest of libraries.”

Vigilant said nothing for several moments, and began pacing uneasily around the obelisk which his projection seemed to come from.

Mordin frowned. “This worries you?”

“Yes. It does. It does indeed,” Vigilant muttered. “I - we - had expected some loss of continuity between what my people knew, and what you - the Tribals, developed - would recall. But to know so little? To know nearly nothing? This, I do find concerning. Gravely so. I would not even know where to start.”

“The basics, then,” Mordin pressed. “As you would teach a child.”

“Hrm. Very well. I - the man from which I was crafted - was raised in chaos, Herald Solus. For as long as my donor-mind could recall, and for many upon many generations prior, the Prothean Theocracy - which spanned the stars and beyond - was threatened within and without.” Vigilant bared his teeth, and his tone darkened. “From within, heathens - those who would deny the rightful station of the Ones Most High in words and actions. From without, the Lightless Hunters. The Iron Harvest. The first threat weakened us, and the second ground us to dust.”

“So your people fought a civil war regarding - correct me if I’m wrong - whether or not to worship, ah, eldritch beings?” Mordin asked.

“Not worship - serve,” Vigilant corrected. “Wretched and ungrateful, there were those who spurned the gifts and powers the Ones Most High would bestow upon them; you know of similar things. The Blood. And the gift of ensorcelling images.”

“And that sparked a war? You said this was a matter of service, not unwanted boons.”

Vigilant made a rumbling noise, lips pursed in something Mordin might have called frustration. “Those who were gifted power within the Theocracy discharged their rule as they saw fit. As was their right. The heathens and infidels who lived among us saw this - the rightful way of things - and they were offended. To the point of violence. Eons of it.”

“This was the wish of your patrons?”

“But of course,” Vigilant replied, tilting his head slightly forward. “Power is its own justice, no? You disagree?”

Mordin nodded. “My patron disagrees. My - what did you call her - Observer disagrees. I disagree.”

Vigilant blinked several times, apparently lost in thought. “Mmm.” It wasn’t an answer, so much as mere noise. “It is not my place to judge the thoughts of One Most High - certainly not one with power plainly visible through Her symbols. I must ask, though, is the same belief shared by your people? Not ones the ones who have been Gifted, I might add - the common folk.”

“Yes. Perhaps not everyone - there are plenty of people I know who would share your views. But not the majority,” Mordin noted proudly. “Power and justice are separate; that is what the people wish for, even if the reality of the situation isn’t always so.”

“And your society has not collapsed? Torn itself to pieces? Interesting,” Vigilant said as he began to pace around the obelisk once more. “Distasteful as I find this, perhaps it is not my place to judge; I am sure that my own ancestors would find my views as abhorrent as I found yours. In the future, we ought to discuss our thoughts on the philosophy of justice, power, and rule. For now, let us continue.”

“You spoke of the, ah, ‘Lightless Hunters?’ I’m unfamiliar with the term.”

“Most distressing,” Vigilant muttered. “You know nothing of them?”

“A foe from, ah, beyond the stars? Who defeated your people by taking advantage of infighting? I’ve read fiction on the subject,” Mordin noted, “but nothing factual.”

“Damnation. I sense that I could speak the many names I have for this foe, and you would not understand. Very well. From the beginning, as you wished.” Vigilant sighed. “They were the constructors of the Keep and the Lighthouses-”

“-wait, what?” Mordin sputtered. “The - hold on - let me get this straight. The things that wiped out the Protheans also built the Citadel? And - let me guess, the mass relays?”

“Yes,” Vigilant replied gravely. “We thought them gifts of the Ones Most High, and they did nothing to dissuade us from believing it to be thus - and so, when the Iron Harvest fell upon us, they did so without warning.”

“The - the Iron Harvest, the Lightless Hunters,” Mordin pressed, “what are they? And how powerful are they that your society, wielding magic and Gifts and Blood, just, what, fell apart?”

“They are similar in many ways to the Ones Most High,” Vigilant explained, “but equally different. The Ones Most High are...superior. Beyond the comprehension of the ungifted. Things such as time and space and flesh mean little to them, while thoughts and concepts are their currency. This holds true for your patron?”

“It does,” Mordin managed, far more calmly than he felt.

“Such does not apply to the Iron Harvest,” Vigilant continued. “They are mundane in their construction - mere constructs of flesh and metal. Fusions of the organic and synthetic mind. How did they proclaim themselves - ‘a nation unto their own,’ or the like. Even I, the Steward of the Keep, cannot deny the genius behind their filth.”

“They - oh, gods,” Mordin stammered. “Were they trying to, to, comprehend? See? Understand the Great Ones? And if they couldn’t do it with one mind, or stay sane with one mind, they’d do it with many? How many?”

“Each Harvester a nation unto itself,” Vigilant whispered, eyes wide. “One Harvester. One society. They hunted entire peoples before the first prothean could make fire. Long before. Eons upon eons before. Every body, every soul, every drop of blood, harvested and extracted in the fires of the worst heresies - then molded together in the greatest blasphemy ever conceived. Whole armies, Herald Solus. Armies. Do you understand? An armada - a fleet! Countless numbers, Herald. Each Harvester a nation unto itself, and for each Harvester its own retinue of failures and indignities and affronts to all that is holy.”

“You don’t know how long they’ve been around for.”

“No. Our best minds attempted to discern the truth, but to no avail. The Lightless Hunters would see themselves dead before divulging any information about themselves, let alone their origins - and the records of our predecessors were, like our own are to you, it would seem, expunged.” Vigilant made a fist and pounded his chest several times, growling low. “ _Niseos methon -_ it is a process, Herald. Refined and perfected. Iterated upon. First - I believe - they sow the seeds of discord. It begins with their Claiming of the powerful and the influential. Then comes the sowing of discord - wide enough to weaken the victim. Long enough for it to take on a life of its own.”

“Then the harvest.”

“Yes. Then comes the harvest. They used the Keep - the Citadel - as their entrance. Deep within the heart of this cursed place is the very same sort of engine that powers the, ah, you called them mass relays? Indeed, the Citadel is a beacon for the Iron Harvest; it was from here that the heretic hordes sprung forth. This station is no home or lair, Herald,” Vigilant warned. “It is a trap. Make no mistake, son of Mohip - the Citadel’s central placement is no mere coincidence. Your powers are centered here?”

“They are.”

“As were ours - and so it was no matter for the Lightless Hunters to decapitate the leaders and visionaries of the Theocracy in one fell swoop,” Vigilant managed through gnashing teeth. “From there, it was not a matter of if the Theocracy would fall, but when. The ranks of the Harvest grew with each of our dead. Our plans and strategies laid bare by traitors, planted since birth.”

“But your patrons,” Mordin protested. “The Ones Most High. They - they didn’t protect you?”

Vigilant closed his eyes, ceased his pacing and fell silent for a long while.

“No, Mordin Solus. No. They did not,” Vigilant admitted quietly. “If they did assist us, I was not aware of such, nor was anyone within my circle of knowledge. I prefer to think that, in our moment of need, our masters forsook us. It is preferable to the alternative.”

“If these Harvesters have the ability to harm - or kill - the Great Ones, I need to know, Vigilant.” Mordin locked eyes with the prothean projection. “The survival of my people - of all peoples - relies on it.”

“I cannot help you, Herald,” Vigilant sighed. “I am a Template - the mind of but one man, copied at a point in time and made eternal. The man I was crafted from did not have an answer to that question when I was made.”

“Wait. So this uploading process - it didn’t kill the original donor? What happened to Ksad Ishan?”

“He - and a few other survivors of the Harvest - were sequestered on the crypt-world of Otesk; their goal was to outlast the Harvest, and wait for the eventual retreat of the Lightless Hunters from the galaxy. Thus were many of our finest minds brought there, held in stasis as the final hope of the prothean people. The effort failed, of course,” Vigilant spat, “and in the cruelest of ironies it was due to a lack of efficiency on the part of the Lightless Hunters.”

“They took too long, didn’t they,” Mordin said, working through the scenario. “Stasis takes power - magic or physical, right? No power, no survivors?”

“Indeed, Herald - you are, once again, unfortunately correct,” Vigilant noted. “The Template in charge of the facility on Otesk had no choice but to consume the souls and bodies of its own subjects in an attempt to prolong the life of the others. By the time the Harvest had finished, the effort had failed. Only a dozen souls survived the long sleep - not enough to continue the war. But those twelve minds were - if you will permit me the boasting - among, if not the finest the Theocracy had to offer. From their confines within the infinite crypts, they discovered a method of travel between Otesk and the Citadel - the Path.”

“What’s the catch?” Mordin shook his head. “The Path can’t have worked flawlessly, or I’m certain your histories and knowledge would have survived.”

“Indeed. The Path was - is - an attempt to reconstruct a Lighthouse; the project both began and ended long before anyone was aware of the Iron Harvest. Ultimately, the Path worked, but only partially; it could be traveled to, but not from. With enough time and resources, any person can construct an entrance to the Path - but there is no way to return from the origin point,” Vigilant explained. “The choice was made. An archive was built on Otesk, the Template was powered down, and all survivors moved to the Keep to understand, and ultimately study how we might subvert the Keep’s securities and functions.”

“Leading to your creation, I presume.”

“Correct. A beacon exists within the Keep; its purpose is to call forth the Iron Harvest. It was merely a matter of disabling the beacon itself, and putting in place a mechanism to ensure that it would not be repaired or activated once mo-”

“-you’re the thing that stops the beacon from working,” Mordin interjected. “Steward of the Keep. Your job is eternal. You’ve been waiting here, all this time, protecting the primitive species you knew would eventually find this place?”

“Indeed. That is the truth of the matter - though I will admit,” Vigilant replied, “I had expected someone to answer my call a long while ago. Are your peoples not Gifted? Empowered?”

“Most are not,” Mordin replied after a moment. “Even excusing my Heraldry, I’m the exception, not the norm.”

Vigilant considered this for a moment, then grunted. “Fair enough. Regardless - I have informed you of the basics. Now we discuss how you will engineer the destruction of the Lightless Hunters.”

“We’re not ready, not by a long shot,” Mordin pointed out. “Nobody knows about, well, anything you’ve told me, Vigilant, and even if I were to tell everyone I knew about this I would be branded a madman at best.”

Vigilant regarded Mordin with a mixture of disbelief and suspicion. “How can that be? Who will not recognize your station and import? The mere drawing of your patron’s sign makes the matter clear enough, unless you mean to tell me that all of your contemporaries are dullards - though perhaps with the Tribal-borne, I should not be surprised.”

“You will retract your insult,” Mordin snapped.

“Ah. My apologies. I meant no offense,” Vigilant muttered indifferently. “So? Will you not answer my query?”

“The, ah, how to put it - my people are not Gifted or touched by the eldritch,” Mordin explained slowly. “Most cannot even perceive their presence - so for me to proclaim my station would be a fruitless endeavor.”

Vigilant blinked several times, and scratched at his head with both hands. “I understand, conceptually. Practically, I do not comprehend you.”

“I don’t need you to like it,” Mordin pointed out. “It’s the truth.”

“ _Niasoss ojith_ ,” Vigilant groaned. “Inconceivable. Pathetic! How do you not tear at your flesh when dealing with such ignorance? I had consigned myself to thinking that the prothean legacy was one of heresy and idolatry - but this, this is worse!”

“Like I said,” Mordin ground out, “you don’t have to like it.”

“And I do not! I most certainly do not approve,” Vigilant grumbled. “So. Your people do not show you the respect you should be afforded, and are unlikely to do so in any short amount of time. That is something you will have to fix - I wager you would find my solutions unpalatable.”

“Would they involve Claiming anyone who disagrees with me?” Mordin asked with obvious distaste.

“You know it is the right thing to do,” Vigilant stated matter-of-factly. “And yet you do not do it. Were I an uncouth man, I would call you a coward and a weakling.”

“You did just call me those things.”

“I was speaking in terms of theory and supposition,” Vigilant muttered. “Regardless! You refuse the obvious and simple path. I have no answer for you there. Where I can assist you, however, is in the study of the Iron Harvest - and, if luck is your ally, in finding records of the Prothean Theocracy. Otesk was where the hope of vengeance was stored - but there were other places where knowledge alone was hidden. That, I can reveal to you.”

“What sorts of knowledge? Historical records? Combat data? I need details, Steward,” Mordin pressed. “I’m one man, and my influence is small.”

“Hrm. Well, for one, Otesk would be an obvious place to start, though I do not know what you would call it; I shall call forth a map shortly. Allow me to finish. The other point of interest I believe you would be best served to seek is Anoleth; another crypt-world where our finest crusaders were laid to rest. I know that the practice of placing the gravely-wounded in stasis was carried out there,” Vigilant mused, “and that many warriors who could not be saved had Templates made to carry on their legacy. Without power, I imagine most are dead now - but perhaps you could investigate regardless. I assume you are ageless?”

“I am,” Mordin said, as though he’d been immortal for more than an hour.

“Thank the Ones Most High, you have some forethought,” Vigilant exclaimed. “So - a map! Give me a moment to prepare a map for you.”

Mordin flinched as the Eyes within him felt a shudder in reality; it reminded him of entering the Dream - and he watched, stunned, as two Keepers marched up to the obelisk. Both touched the spire with outstretched arms - and were, in an instant, reduced to a pile of fleshy sludge which oozed into a single pool.

“I forgot to ask about the Keepers,” Mordin wondered aloud as he watched Vigilant turn his focus on the meat-pool. “Are they your constructions? Or that of the Harvesters?”

“The Harvesters. But, like the Keep itself, they serve me now,” Vigilant replied, eyes firmly on the ooze. “Their original purpose was to repair the Keep - which they still do without my control. But so too was their purpose to hide the Keep’s functions, and signal the start of the Iron Harvest. As noted, I prevent such a thing from happening. Ah - one moment - here.”

Mordin watched, fascinated, as the mass of Keeper-flesh shrunk into a small, square meat-plate, roughly the size of a datapad; it bore a symbol of a triangle with a circle in the middle, a single line radiating from each point on the triangle.

“Your map, Herald,” Vigilant said, gesturing to the plate with both hands. “Yours to consume as you please; it holds the location of Otesk and Anoleth.”

Mordin knelt, dimly aware of the extra bones in his spine flexing to let him down - and touched the plate. It hummed and churned with a power that vaguely resembled the same kind carried within his Blood - and yet it was different, tasted different, felt different.

“Ah, you savour the taste before the act of consumption. The mark of a connoisseur. Take your time, Herald,” Vigilant said approvingly. “The first meal you have of an alien cuisine is always the most memorable.”

Mordin took the flesh in both hands, felt the warmth merge with his own, felt the pulses of the flesh synchronize with his heartbeat. He raised the plate to his mouth, and ate, and he saw.

**And he saw.**

 

* * *

 

**EYE OF THE WOMB**

**  
**  
A rune consisting of two eyes, one within another; a straight line divides the rune vertically through its centre, and two lines fork diagonally from the top and bottom of the dividing line.

A simple symbol, compared to many others, but She teaches Her children early on that simple things can have great power.

The bond between mother and child - especially the bond of blood - should never be taken lightly.  
 **  
\-----**

**I**   
_An eye within an eye:_

_One for the Mother, who is barren,_

_and_

_One for the Child, who cannot be._

_The Light is the hope that the fields can be made fallow._

_The Line is the fear that the fields will be forever salted._

_\----_  
 **  
II  
**  
1: [Once, there were two young women. The elder of the two held virtue and compassion in the highest regard; the younger of the two, who looked up to the elder, saw this and decided that she too would live a life of virtue and compassion.]

2: [The two women became renowned for their kindness and their charity, and in time came to be known as sisters despite sharing no blood.]

3: [So it was that, when the elder of the two - and her betrothed - passed in an untimely manner, the younger swore to raise the now-orphaned child.]

4: [For three years, all was well - and then the child was taken by consumption. Though the younger woman mourned, she knew that without a child her family's legacy would be lost.]

5: [Only then did the younger woman learn that she was barren. She learned quickly that a woman who could bear no child was no woman at all; not even her reputation would save her.]

6: [She left the day the funeral was held, cast out into the world beyond. She held no sorrow, for now she had purpose.]

7: [ **HOW QUICKLY YOU GROW.** ]

 

\----

  


**III  
**   
**I REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE LIFELESS.**

**EMPTY AND COLD.**

**BEHOLD YOURSELF NOW: MY HERALD. MY CHILD. MY LITTLE ONE.**

**WHO COULD DARE TO DENY YOU?**

**ALL THAT YOU DESIRE IS YOURS TO HAVE.**

**I DEMAND IT. I REQUIRE IT. I NEED IT TO BE SO.**   


* * *

 

 

**WOMB OF THE BONDED**

  
**  
\-----**

**I  
**   
_Even as the womb was pierced,_

_Even as the host was caged:_

_Fear is the finest service, Terror the greatest gift._

_To make suffering is to know of Them._

_To suffer is to be with Them._

__There could not be sorrow_ _

__how could there be_ _

__when all was calm and Just?_ _

* * *

 

“Awake? I had begun to worry that you’d somehow failed to parse the very simple set of directions I’d imprinted into that plate. It would have been a great waste of time to share with you all that I have, only to find that your brain was unable to comprehend something as basic as a map.”

Mordin opened his eyes to find himself laying on the floor of Vigilant’s chamber; he eased himself upright, frowning.

“The rune,” Mordin muttered. “What did you do to them? What did they do to you?”

“Mmm?” Vigilant blinked several times, shaking his head. “I do not understand your query.”

“I got your map, alright. A lot more than just your map,” Mordin continued, voice and stature growing stronger. “The Womb of the Bonded. Chained, pierced, enslaved - I felt so much anger, so much pain - this is your mark? This is the mark of your patron?”

“I have no patron in these troubling times,” Vigilant replied, regarding Mordin with concern. “And it is obvious that we - my people - had lost the favour of our masters, or had it taken from us in our final days. The Womb of the Bonded is not the - how do you call them? Runes? Yes, it is not the rune of One Most High - I would not have dared to inscribe it myself, had it been so - nor is it the markings of the sort that were granted, Herald. The marking is mine. It is the work of Ksad Ishan and those who died with him. Their legacy. Their anger. Their pain - and their revenge.”

“The Prothean womb. Bonded to extinction. We’re your children? Your legacy?” Mordin asked.

“Yes. That was the the intent, at least,” Vigilant replied, shrugging. “Whether or not you, specifically, were the sort of weapon or legacy that my people would have wanted is rather besides the point now, I wager. So? The map - you understand where you must go to learn more?”

“I do,” Mordin replied after a moment’s thought. “I think I recognize both of them. Otesk is, if I’m right, Ilos-”

“-no, it is not named Ilos,” Vigilant spat. “Where did you learn of that name?”

“It’s one of the only places named in surviving Prothean records,” Mordin explained, “if our translations were right.”

“You shall cease your speculations for the moment,” Vigilant interjected. “Your ignorance is understandable; no doubt that record comes from an infidel historian more interested in promulgating their foul lies over recording any sort of truth. The planet’s name is Otesk; Ilos was a name spoken only by heathen tongues. Now, you are no longer ignorant, and I will not grant you any further exemptions from my anger.”

“Fair enough. Okay, so Otesk,” Mordin explained, “people have been looking for it ever since the, ah, heathen records were discovered. Problem is, the mass relay which leads to Otesk got blown away by a supernova; I guarantee it’s still intact, but nobody knows where it is and finding it isn’t exactly a simple matter. Unless you have an up-to-date map of every relay’s location?”

“I have no such thing,” Vigilant grumbled. “The Keep’s controls - what I have access to, anyhow - are surprisingly limited in their scope. I can block the Keep’s signals from reaching the Iron Harvest, and I am aware of which of the Lighthouses still exist - but I cannot tell you where they are, or how to find them.”

“So that leaves Anoleth - we call it Kena, in the Surik system,” Mordin noted. “It’s mostly uninhabited at the moment - it was only discovered a few years ago. Bunch of colonists have set up there - mostly just farmers and the like.”

“Very good. It will be no trouble for you, then, to journey there and search for the crypts of Anoleth?”

“Well, I didn’t say it would be no trouble,” Mordin cautioned. “I am...currently employed, and my work does not allow for easy travel.”

“Then you should leave that job at once. You have new work. More important work. Surely you must agree?” Vigilant asked.

“I - my employers are unlikely to take my sudden departure well,” Mordin said slowly.

Vigilant stared at Mordin for several moments in silence, head tilted forward slightly. “What sort of work is this? Certainly not hard labour - you do not look the part of a filthy, dirt-encrusted peasant. And you hardly have the physique of a warrior, if you will mind my observing so.”

“I do mind,” Mordin groaned. “I’ve gone through the training to be one - and was simply picked up by another arm of my government.”

“Government. Well, I know nothing of what you think a proper governing body looks like, but I would speculate that you are the servant of your peoples’ spymasters, or the like,” Vigilant offered.

“I am a Herald,” Mordin replied with a sigh. “That is the limit of what you need to understand.”

“So you say.” Vigilant scoffed. “So. You cannot venture to Kena. How, then, will you search for the histories of my people? Do you intend to hire mercenaries? Pay scholars to do the work for you?”

“Why does it matter to you, Vigilant?” Mordin asked. “The job will be done, either way.”

“You are my tool of vengeance, Herald. Yes, I am certain that, if you were to fail, or if you had not come along, that some other would have done so in the future. Perhaps beyond the next calling of the Iron Harvest,” Vigilant explained simply. “But every cycle which passes only strengthens the Lightless Hunters, no? It is in my best interest - and yours, and that of your peoples - to see your success. And permit me to say that I have much grander knowledge than you, at least with respect to the danger you face.”

“I feel like you’ve insulted me without directly saying as much,” Mordin muttered.

Vigilant shrugged. “No doubt I have. I shall continue to work on speaking in a manner which does not offend you. We stray from our topic of choice, though, and you did not answer my question.”

“The colleague I mentioned earlier, the one who has devoted her studies to the history of the Protheans? I intend to let her know about the crypts on Kena,” Mordin explained. “She already has the resources, tools, and mandate to search for such things.”

“And you will explain my presence?”

“No,” Mordin said. “Absolutely not. People - nobody - can know about you, not yet.”

“You intend to stem the spread of panic, or the like?” Vigilant nodded slowly. “I can understand why you might act in such a manner. I represent a grander truth that the masses are not ready for? Something akin to such?”

“I don’t want to lie to people,” Mordin explained. “As important as it is to defeat the Iron Harvest - I also have the job of preparing people for my Gentle Mother’s arrival. Hiding the truth from people would make that hard - just as much as making my people see the Great Ones as a threat.”

“What? Where in our previous discussion did we promote such blasphemy?” Vigilant sputtered. “You insult your own people, Herald, if you claim they would descend into such heresy at the mere knowledge of the Iron Harvest.”

“I didn’t say that we discussed those things,” Mordin sighed. “I understand this is hard for you to get - but think about it from their perspective. You know - I’ve told you - that there are none that I know of among my people who are Gifted. Let’s say I inform them of the entire truth - that I am the Herald of the Lunar Womb, that the Protheans were wiped out by the Iron Harvest, and that at some point in the future the Harvest will come and turn everyone into more Lightless Hunters. Surely you can see how that’s not going to inspire anything besides blind panic?”

“If your people had more fortitude than snivelling children? Yes,” Vigilant replied. “Though, of course, the Prothean Theocracy was subject to the same reaction - from the unwashed masses, anyhow - and so I cannot entirely fault your people.”

“Exactly. The news that not only are these creatures coming from beyond the stars to destroy all civilizations and consume all life is bad enough,” Mordin continued. “And then we throw in the fact that a Herald was placed among them? To ‘prepare’ the Citadel and its people for the arrival of my patron? I hardly think that’ll be taken in good faith.”

Vigilant said nothing for several moments, eyes flitting about in thought.

“But,” Vigilant said eventually, “you will need to enlighten the ignorant, whether in service of your patron, or in the defense of life against the Harvest. You cannot deny that.”

“I didn’t.”

“So? What will you do?” Vigilant squinted at Mordin and waved his arms slightly in a gesture Mordin couldn’t quite interpret. “I cannot help you discern or comprehend the minds of the untouched, but neither will I be pleased by your leaving here without some sort of plan in mind.”

“Can I bring someone else, someone mundane, to you?” Mordin asked, brow furrowing in concentration. “If I were to escort someone to this chamber, would anything prevent them from understanding you?”

“You only see me because you are Gifted, unlike the uncouth masses which call the Keep home,” Vigilant explained with obvious distaste. “Of course, I could attempt to communicate through the Keepers, at least within the chambers I have control over - but without Gifted blood and the like, I am unsure if they would even survive the entry into this place.”

“The loop in the tube?”

“Yes.”

“I thought that was you controlling some sort of barrier or security system,” Mordin mused. “It’s automated?”

“Indeed. Designed to ensure that all things which spurn the touch of the Ones Most High are either eternally trapped, or slain by a great fall,” Vigilant noted proudly. “Designed by one of my late colleagues - I think it a work of art, personally.”

“Damn. Okay. So that means no bringing people in, or recordings out. Not yet, anyway.”

“I still fail to see how you would be branded a madman for merely explaining the truth of things,” Vigilant muttered. “So - what, then, if you will not act as the direct source of knowledge on these matters? You tell this colleague of yours to search Anoleth for records of my people? What comes next?”

“It depends,” Mordin replied. “It depends heavily on what my colleague finds on Anoleth - on Kena. The more information there is there, the better - not only can I explain information I know - or that I’ve learned from you - away as being found on Kena, I can also plausibly deny the origin of that knowledge. If I’m lucky.”

“Luck, Herald, makes for a poor shield.”

“I’m ageless. You’re holding the Iron Harvest back. We have time. Not an infinite amount,” Mordin admitted, “but time to work. Better for us to prepare a defense in-depth on every conceivable level, than to let those without the full picture throw something together, no?”

“I suppose, taken from your point of view, such a course of action might make sense,” Vigilant muttered, scratching at his head with both hands. “I did not think to ask this earlier - can your patron and Her kin not assist us in some way?”

“I - hrm.” Mordin paused, frowning. “Allow me a moment to confer with my Observer.”

“Yes. Please do.”

_So,_  Mordin asked mentally,  _do we have Her support? I mean, of course we do, conceptually. But does She have resources to mobilize in a fight? Could She help us, with, uh, ships? Weapons? Soldiers?_

The Plain Doll’s tone was conciliatory.  _She does, little one, but until you prepare the people of the Citadel for Her with Blood and Eyes, I would caution you against relying on Her intercession. I do not know enough about these Lightless Hunters to say whether or not they would defeat the Gentle Mother and her defenders - but I can guarantee you that a defeat of these abominations would be pointless if every citizen of the Citadel was driven mad because of it._

_Well, yes. I get that,_  Mordin grumbled.  _But She does have soldiers. An army. Right?_

_Perhaps not in the way you might imagine it, but yes - She is not without her tools of war. As I told you before - our Calm Eternal was not given to us. It was taken by force._

_That’s not very concrete._

_Purposefully so. You are not ready to know the details._

Mordin sighed.  _Of course not. But that’s not much to go on, on your side or Vigilant’s._

_No, it is not,_  the Plain Doll admitted.  _But it is what you - and I - have to work with, at the moment._

_I guess._  Mordin cleared his throat, and looked back up at Vigilant, who was waiting expectantly. “Yes. My patron can help, and is willing to help - but without further details about exactly how the Iron Harvest is carried out, and the precise nature of the Lightless Hunters, neither the Plain Doll or I can give you any concrete estimates as to exactly how a fight between the two groups would turn out.”

“I suppose that, as a sign of support, that will have to do for now. I would offer you more information, but you have only the mind of Ksad Ishan to rely on - without the records at Otesk, or whatever you find at Anoleth, in any case,” Vigilant noted. “So it is. Very well. I do not think your plan is as developed as it ought to be, but it shall suffice for now. Take your leave, Herald - I have much to consider and more to plan.”

“What do you have to do besides keep the call for the Harvest to go out?” Mordin asked.

“I seek to expand my control of the Keep. I sense much from my place within the Keep’s labyrinthine heart - but I see little in detail. Awake as I am now, knowing that at the very least there is one person - and one Observer - who has risen above the scent of mediocrity, I think it best to take a more proactive stance on matters. I wish to observe your people directly.”

“You won’t interfere with them,” Mordin stated. “That is not a request.”

“Interfere? I intend no such thing,” Vigilant protested. “Bad enough that the Keep is overrun by the likes of the ignorant - I would prefer death over having to interact with such dullards. No, I shall keep my silence, at least until you enlighten them to the truth of things.”

“I want your word,” Mordin pressed.

“You have it, Herald. And in any case - there is no guarantee that I will be able to manage such things,” Vigilant sighed. “I have been held in timeless sleep for many upon many years, my only function to listen for the call of the Ones Most High and to hold back the Harvest’s call. We shall see to what degree I am able change my destiny - and to what degree you will change the destiny of your people.”

“Best of l- actually, I do have a question, Vigilant.”

“Speak.”

“How do I get out of this place? I would really rather not go all the way back up the tube which brought me here, looped or otherwise,” Mordin noted.

“Ah. I shall send a Keeper to show you the way out,” Vigilant said. “The warded barriers were slow to grant you entry - no doubt a symptom of their lack of use. They shall expel you from my chambers with great haste.”

Mordin stared at Vigilant.

“I did not mean that in an offensive way,” Vigilant sighed. “You are very easily offended, Herald. I suggest you read into my remarks less.”

“Really.”

Vigilant nodded. “Yes.”

“I - okay," Mordin said, holding back any further words. "I’ll be on my way, then.”

“Very good. Go with the blessings of the Ones Most High,” Vigilant exclaimed, saluting Mordin as he’d done before, “and spread Their Word and Their Anger with a heavy hand.”

_That’s not ominous or vaguely evil in the slightest,_ Mordin thought as he turned around and began following a Keeper back out to the room before Vigilant’s chambers.

_Perhaps it is not our place to judge?_

If he was being honest, it sounded as though the Plain Doll was trying to convince herself as much as Mordin.

_He’s the one who started it._

_I know nothing of this Vigilant, or his patrons,_  the Plain Doll noted,  _but his ‘Ones Most High’ do not sound as if they were the kindest of the Great Ones. Surely you cannot fault Vigilant for acting as he does, if his patrons and his people were raised on a diet and currency of suffering._

_I don’t blame him_ , Mordin noted. _Doesn’t mean I like it._

_Like and fault rarely factor into proper diplomacy, no?_

_That’s up for debate._

Mordin stopped as the Keeper guiding him gestured at a section of wall in the room he’d landed in; it glowed with a Womb of the Bonded, and slid apart to reveal a stairway. Mordin nodded at the Keeper, and began his ascent - and in less than five minutes exited out into a tunnel right next to the vertical tube he’d taken to get down into Vigilant’s chambers to begin with. He glared at the tube as he passed by it - then paused.

_Something irks you?_

“My drone,” Mordin yelled. “I never got my damn drone back!”

_Ah. Well, perhaps Vigilant has taken it for inspection, or the like?_

“Like the hells,” Mordin muttered as he walked over to the tube; he stuck his head down it. “HEY! KEEPERS! GIVE ME BACK MY DRONE!”

Mordin removed his head from the tube and leaned against the tunnel wall, scowling - when, a few moments later, his drone - little more than a metal pancake - popped out of the tube and hit the floor with an unceremonious thud.

_The Keeper in question did say that your drone would be returned,_  the Plain Doll laughed.  _Never did it say that it would be returned in prime condition._

_Next time we see Vigilant,_  Mordin fumed as he returned to the back alleys of the Citadel proper,  _I’m making him pay up._

 


End file.
